As launch costs collapse and access to space opens up, this is only the beginning. We can expect many new customers to buy space capabilities, and of course, some will have nefarious intentions. Lowering the barriers to orbit for some lowers the barriers for everyone.

Meanwhile, the infrastructure we depend on in space is more important than ever. Starlink internet serves over 8 million active users globally; countless consumer and enterprise applications rely on GPS, including timing systems that underpin financial transactions; weather forecasting and transportation planning depending on earth observation satellites; and, of course, defense and intelligence systems rely on satellites too. Entire economies depend on this critical infrastructure, and it was previously protected because it was largely inaccessible without working with a government space program. Now, the same conditions that have created the proliferation of these capabilities have also created an attack surface for them.

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Introducing Fortastra

I’m excited to announce Upfront’s investment in Fortastra, an LA-based company building autonomous security satellites to defend critical assets in orbit.

Fortastra is developing maneuverable escort satellites with high delta-v propulsion that can respond quickly to threats in orbit. The satellites are modular and designed for payload swaps across different mission profiles. But the real breakthrough is in the brain, not the body. Fortastra is building a physical AI stack for precise rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO) and, if necessary, autonomous interventions.

Think of it as a security detail for satellites. Security satellites that can approach, inspect, and, if necessary, engage threats to the spacecraft we depend on.

The near-term customer is the US government, which has an urgent interest in protecting its space assets amid rising geopolitical tensions. But Fortastra has bigger ambitions. The physical AI capabilities required to defend satellites are the same capabilities required to build, service, and maintain infrastructure in orbit. Defense today, construction tomorrow.

A Founder Built for This

Mike Smayda is a rare founder. He’s both a technical founder who could lead his engineering team and an experienced government salesperson who could lead the company’s go-to-market.

He spent five years at SpaceX as a senior aerodynamics engineer, working on landing rockets, designing components for Falcon, and developing early Starship architecture. He co-founded Hermeus, a hypersonic aircraft company, where he led systems engineering for novel space and aviation vehicles and served as Chief Product Officer. At Hermeus, he also led customer engagement with defense and intelligence customers, developing a deep understanding of how the government procurement machine actually works.

That combination of engineering depth and government GTM expertise is exceptional, but what really stood out when getting to know Mike was his leadership. One ex-Hermeus employee told us, “Hermeus has the best culture of any company I’ve ever worked for, and Mike was largely responsible for it.” An OG SpaceX leader said, “The greatest impact Mike had on SpaceX was the collection of amazing people he brought into the company after him.”

With his leadership, engineering background, and commercial expertise with government customers, Mike is the right person to build an engineering-led culture for this company.

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The Tipping Point

The space economy has grown faster than our ability to secure it. Launch costs have fallen by over 90% since the Falcon 9 debuted. The number of active satellites has grown from around 1,000 in 2010 to over 12,000 today. This week, reports emerged that SpaceX is planning to go public in 2026 at a valuation of $1.5 trillion2. That would be the largest IPO in history. The scale of the space economy has become undeniable to even the most casual observers now.

Regular, reliable access to orbit has enabled an entire ecosystem of companies building satellites, communications infrastructure, and earth observation capabilities. Every year brings more assets in orbit. And more potential targets.

Rising geopolitical tensions add urgency. Space is becoming one of the most contested domains with peer and near-peer competitors. It is the ultimate high ground, and the US has enjoyed that advantage alone for decades. But other countries are catching up in terms of both space-to-earth and space-to-space capabilities. One country in particular is demonstrating an intention to build satellites that can move other satellites.

Looking Ahead

Fortastra is building the security layer that the space economy needs. Autonomous, intelligent, and capable of defending our most important assets. In the long run, the same capabilities will help us build in space, not just protect what’s already there.

Mike and the Fortastra team are just getting started. They are hiring for several key roles, some of which are listed here. We at Upfront are proud to partner with Mike and honored to be on the journey together. Let’s go!

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Sometimes, a team is so dialed that you have no choice but to back them.

I first met Katie Williams, co-founder of Tern, at a founder dinner hosted by our friends Garrett and Jess. It was supposed to be a casual evening, but midway through the night, I found myself in an impromptu fireside chat with Garrett about fundraising in a down market. (It was 2022.)

I spoke to many people that night, but as the evening was winding down, Garrett pulled me aside to say: “Katie is fantastic. You should back her company.”

He didn’t know what Katie was working on. But he knew her work at Handshake, the company he co-founded, where Katie worked for five and a half years. Garrett also said that her co-founder David was exceptional and that the two of them were capable of accomplishing anything together.

Naturally, when a CEO goes out of his way to recommend investing in people who left his company, you pay attention.

Tern co-founders David Shull, Brian Reath, and Katie were all key early team members at Handshake. David was the first employee and launched multiple core business lines and international markets before leaving to start Tern. Brian was a technical leader responsible for both engineering and sales. Katie built and scaled the customer success function before leading operations at Signal Advisors.

They’ve seen the journey from inception to scale, and they possess both technical and commercial experience in building industry-defining software. With their sights set on travel, Upfront couldn’t be more excited to have partnered with them for their next act.

Travel Advisors are the Industry’s Heart

At first glance, the travel industry can appear to be a never-ending stream of people and organizations that get in the way of a traveler's trip. The complex web of suppliers, advisors, host agencies, consortia, online travel agencies (OTAs), and wholesalers all seem to be out for their little share of the traveler’s wallet.

Startup after startup has tried to cut out the middleman and connect travelers and suppliers directly. Many have tried—and failed—to cut out travel advisors specifically. Often seen as “agents” that simply execute on behalf of their clients, advisors have been attacked by AI tools, OTAs, and every version of software imaginable.

So why did US travel advisors book over $100B+ of travel in 20231 alone?

As we dug into this ecosystem with the Tern team, the reality became clear. Travel advisors aren’t middlemen; they are the heart and soul of the travel ecosystem. Travel advisors are trusted experts and curators of experiences, often serving as the only access to certain types of travel. They know how to navigate boutique hotels, boat charters, safaris, and family trips across four countries, all while taking your family’s specific needs and preferences into account.

Travel is a deeply personal experience, and travel advisors take crafting the perfect trip personally. They love the industry, love their work, and love their clients. It is a relationship business, and it turns out travelers care about their relationships with advisors. They are voting with their wallets and spending more with advisors every year.

Eliminating the Invisible Work

Unfortunately, like many relationship management and service-oriented jobs, travel advisors run their businesses by juggling spreadsheets, PDFs, multiple CRMs, commission tracking tools, accounting services, and more. Of course, none of these systems talk to each other. That’s where Tern comes in.

Tern consolidated the mess of disconnected systems into a single platform for proposals, payments, itineraries, CRM, invoicing, marketing, and more. They’re launching major new features every month. From agentic AI tools that eliminate data entry to one-click invoices that comply with state and international regulations, Tern users now have access to the best in modern software.

The result? In just two years, Tern is now used by over 5,000 advisors and 1,000+ agencies. Tern advisors spend up to 75% less time on administrative work and more time focused on what matters: crafting unforgettable trips for their clients.

A Partnership and a Warm Welcome

In backing Tern, we’re not betting against the travel advisor — we’re betting on them. Tern believes advisors deserve best-in-class tools and that with them, they can build better relationships with their clients and design more magical trips. We believe Tern is the team to make those tools.

I’m thrilled to congratulate the Tern team today on their $13M Series A led by Viewpoint Ventures and Haystack. We’re proud to have made the first investment into the company in 2023 and to continue our support in this next chapter.

I’m also excited to welcome Drew Aldrich and the Viewpoint team to the board. Viewpoint is a thesis-led firm that believes in the power of travel advisors and their importance to this industry. They are a perfect match for the kind of human-first, customer-centric software company Tern is building.

To the travel advisor community: this platform is being built for you. Tern exists to eliminate the invisible work that has slowed you down for too long. And we’re just getting started.

Let’s go!

To introduce the 2024 LA Hard Tech 50, we’re happy to report that entrepreneurship in Los Angeles is thriving.

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LA-based aerospace, defense, industrial automation, and energy/critical resources companies have attracted substantial capital this year, including Anduril’s notable $1.5B Series F. Over the last year, El Segundo and the builders who wave its flag have attracted talent, founders, and media attention as well.

But #Gundo isn’t just a meme. Founders like Isaiah Taylor from Valar Atomics have uprooted their lives and moved their companies and families here to give themselves the best chances of success. Others like Josh Steinman at Galvanick and Fil Aronshtein at Dirac split their time between HQ and LA to stay close to this market.

As we’ve said before, this isn’t a new trend. LA has been the center of the aviation industry for a hundred years. Glenn Martin, Allan Lockheed, Howard Hughes and Amelia Earhart built and flew planes here in the early 20th century. The U-2 Spy Plane, Space Shuttle, and F-35 Lightning II were made here. The first Mars rover, Sojourner, was built in LA and the first laser ever made was made here too.

Today, like back then, the people who were trained in aerospace and defense companies have taken their talents into other critical infrastructure sectors.

Companies like Radiant and Antares usher in a new era of nuclear energy with modular microreactors that could add baseload power across the country and perhaps even on Mars. Hadrian, Senra, and Rangeview pioneer automation and advanced manufacturing that underpins the onshoring of American production. AstroForge seeks to mine platinum group metals on asteroids, Reflect Orbital aims to harness the sun for maximum solar panel utilization and Varda plans to commercialize microgravity manufacturing for pharmaceuticals.

Software companies thrive, too. Zoo introduced a revolutionary text-to-CAD AI model built on a proprietary geometry engine to bring generative AI to hardware design. Sift raised a large Series A to scale its unified observability platform for hardware sensor data. And let’s be real: whether they’re launching deliverable storage units in space like Inversion or deploying FPV drones in Ukraine like Neros, nearly all these companies are software companies, too.

The 2024 LA Hard Tech 50 was more challenging to produce this year because so many companies were worth featuring. When push came to shove, we indexed the list on (1) publicly available information, (2) commercial progress, and (3) feedback from founders and investors. Companies like Divergent, Cover, Vast, AnySignal, and Machina Labs could have easily made the list this year, but they were heads down building. They’ve had productive years, but they were also private years.

We’re also introducing two new sections this year. First, we want to recognize ten operators who we consistently hear about as critical company builders. Operators don’t always get the same attention as company founders. Still, these crucial people wade into uncertainty, make huge sacrifices, and carry physical and emotional burdens to make their companies work. Founders know this. Congratulations to the ten 2024 LA Hard Tech Operators of the Year.

Finally, we want to recognize five ecosystem builders who helped build the LA Hard Tech ecosystem in 2024. Cameron Schiller from Rangeview convinced his friends like Augustus Doricko from Rainmaker to move to El Segundo and build with him here. They rallied a movement and brought national attention to what’s happening in the South Bay. Karan Talati and the First Resonance team hosted the first LA Hard Tech 50 party and have been great partners to the ecosystem. Xander Oltmann from Commodity Capital is a key early collaborator and first check writer to the founders here. Finally, Nathan Mintz from CX2 and Epirus is an OG in Gundo (OG’s leave out “The”) and he has been an invaluable resource to founders and operators for years. We owe a huge thank you to you all.

Now, we present the 2024 LA Hard Tech 50. Congratulations to the 20 new entrants. We’re excited to see what you do in 2025.

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LA Hard Tech 50

We created a database of the LA Hard Tech 50 and honorable mentions. You can also find the companies on a map. Think we missed something? Let us know here.

Space

SpaceX

CEO & Key People: Elon Musk, Gwynne Shotwell, Mark Juncosa
Stage: Late growth
Founded: 2002
Hawthorne, CA
Designer and manufacturer of reusable medium-lift and super heavy-lift orbital launch vehicles and LEO satellite communications technology.

SpaceX had an outstanding year. They moved the Starship program forward aggressively with 4 test flights, successfully catching the booster at the launch tower and landing the Starship on water. They expanded Starlink to billions in revenue and started rolling out their direct-to-cell network. They had 124 successful Falcon launches, achieved a record turnaround time between two flights of the same booster of 14 days, and reportedly launched a tender offer at $350B. We can’t wait to see what 2025 holds for SpaceX.

Rocket Lab

CEO & Key People: Peter Beck
Stage: Public
Founded: 2006
Long Beach, CA
Designer and manufacturer of small and medium-lift orbital launch vehicles, satellite buses, and satellite subsystems.

While Rocket Lab may not have had as dramatic of a year as SpaceX, they are the only other new launch company that is regularly sending payload to orbit. Their Electron rocket achieved 13 successful orbital launches and 1 suborbital launch so far this year. They also hit key milestones in the development of their next-generation Neutron rocket, successfully hot-firing its Archimedes engine for the first time.

Apex

CEO & Key People: Ian Cinnamon, Max Benassi
Stage: Series B
Founded: 2022
Playa Vista, CA
Manufacturer of standard and configurable satellite buses with transparent pricing.

In 2024, Apex successfully launched their first Aries spacecraft into orbit on a SpaceX transporter mission, which performed nominally, a mere 18 months after founding the company. On the heels of that launch, they raised a $95M Series B led by XYZ Ventures and CRV. More recently, they announced a partnership for Anduril to procure Apex satellite buses.

Impulse Space

CEO & Key People: Tom Mueller, Eric Romo
Stage: Series B
Founded: 2021
Redondo Beach, CA
Designer and manufacturer of orbital transfer vehicles for maneuvering orbits and last-mile payload delivery.

Impulse announced a number of large and important government contracts this year, including a $34.5M Phase III SBIR contract with Space Systems Command and DIU, an NRO BALISTA contract, and were selected for a NASA rideshare IDIQ of up to $300M. They raised a massive $150M Series B led by Founders Fund, and also announced a partnership with Anduril for highly maneuverable space missions.

Varda Space Industries

CEO & Key People: Will Bruey, Delian Asparouhov
Stage: Series B
Founded: 2020
El Segundo, CA
Developing a space-based platform for manufacturing pharmaceuticals on-orbit and re-entry vehicles to return to Earth.

Varda achieved a critical technical milestone in 2024 - their re-entry capsule successfully re-entered the atmosphere and landed in the Utah desert in February, bringing back the HIV drug ritonavir that they had crystallized in orbit. They also raised a $90M Series B led by Caffeinated Capital, and earned a $48M contract with the Air Force Research Lab to test military payloads on their re-entry capsules

Umbra Space

CEO & Key People: David Langan, Gabe Dominocielo
Stage: Series B
Founded: 2015
Santa Barbara, CA
Designer, manufacturer, and operator of a constellation of earth observation satellites using synthetic aperture radar to deliver high resolution imagery from orbit.

In 2024, Umbra made important strides on the business development front, winning contracts with the Space Development Agency, the NRO for their Commercial Radar Capabilities program, and advanced to Phase II for DARPA’s Distributed Radar Image Formation Technology (DRIFT) program.

Astrolab

CEO & Key People: Jaret Matthews
Stage: Privately funded
Founded: 2019
Hawthorne, CA
Developing modular and autonomous lunar rovers with multi-mission capabilities for exploration, resource utilization, and logistics on the Moon and beyond.

In April 2024, Astrolab became one of three companies to be awarded by NASA to develop a Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) to support astronauts during the Artemis program. Astrolab’s contract is worth up to $1.9B over 13 years.

K2 Space

CEO & Key People: Karan Kunjur, Neel Kunjur
Stage: Series A
Founded: 2022
Torrance, CA
Leveraging cheaper and more available heavy-lift launch to manufacture larger and more massive satellite buses.

Building off their seed round of $8.5M led by First Round, K2 raised a massive $50M Series A led by Altimeter Capital announced in February of this year.

AstroForge

CEO & Key People: Matt Gialich, Jose Acain
Stage: Late growth
Founded: 2021
Huntington Beach, CA
Mining near-Earth asteroids to deliver from space to Earth.

AstroForge raised a $40M Series A this summer led by Nova Threshold, and became the first company to ever be awarded a commercial license for deep space communications by the FCC.

Inversion

CEO & Key People: Justin Fiaschetti, Austin Briggs
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2021
Hawthorne, CA
Rapid, responsive delivery of cargo to Earth from orbit using manufactured re-entry vehicles.

Inversion made important strides across the valley of death with a $71M STRATFI contract awarded by AFRL and SpaceWERX to develop their orbital re-entry system. They matched this with a $44M Series A equity financing led by Spark Capital and Adjacent.

Northwood Space

CEO & Key People: Bridgit Mendler, Griffin Cleverly, Shaurya Luthra
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2023
El Segundo, CA
Developer of phased array ground stations to facilitate rapid and efficient satellite data transmission between Earth and space.

Northwood came out of stealth at the beginning of 2024 with $6.3M in seed funding led by Founders Fund and Andreessen Horowitz. Armed with that capital, over the summer, they successfully demonstrated their first phased array ground station by connecting with Planet satellites.

OurSky

CEO & Key People: Dan Roelker, Connor Poole, Alex Hawkinson
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2022
Culver City, CA
Developer of a data infrastructure platform for space applications leveraging real-time observational data and analysis of objects in space.

OurSky announced a $9.5M seed round led by Upfront Ventures and alongside Oceans Ventures, Venrex Investment Management, Marlinspike Partners and Embedded Ventures. With early customer momentum and a wave of announcements expected early next year, the company is poised to have a breakout year.

Reflect Orbital

CEO & Key People: Ben Nowack, Tristan Semmelhack
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2021
Hawthorne, CA
Designer and manufacturer of reflective satellites that beam sunlight to solar farms, extending operational uptime during twilight hours.

In 2024, Reflect Orbital announced a $6.5M seed round led by Sequoia Capital, and moved from Santa Monica to a larger facility in Hawthorne.

Starpath

CEO & Key People: Saurov Shroff, Mihir Gondhalekar
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2022
Hawthorne, CA
Builder of lunar rovers and in-situ resource utilization systems for generating fuel directly on the Moon's surface.

Starpath announced in August that they closed a $12M seed round co-led by 8VC and Fusion Fund, accelerating their plans to mine lunar ice and convert it into rocket propellant.

Defense

Anduril

CEO & Key People: Brian Schimpf, Palmer Luckey, Matt Grimm, Trae Stephens
Stage: Series F
Founded: 2017
Costa Mesa, CA
Building a lattice of interconnected and software-enabled sensors and autonomous systems to deliver new capabilities to the battlefield for the DOD and allies.

Anduril’s momentum is unstoppable - it feels like almost every day a new bombshell product launch or partnership is announced. In just the last week, Anduril announced partnerships with both Palantir and OpenAI to leverage AI for national security, their new Dive-XL unmanned underwater vehicle, and their new Lattice Mesh and Lattice SDK that enables other companies to build interoperable technology on top of Lattice. In September, they announced their new Barracuda cruise missile platform. On the BD side, Anduril won a contract with the DOD’s Chief Digital and AI Office, a contract with DIU Replicator for collaborative autonomy, an IDIQ with the Marine Corps for C-UAS, and were one of two firms selected for the CCA program with the Air Force. Anduril also announced a $1.5B Series F led by Founders Fund and Sands Capital this year.

Shield AI

CEO & Key People: Ryan Tseng, Brandon Tseng
Stage: Series F
Founded: 2015
San Diego, CA
Developer of autonomous AI pilot software for manned and unmanned aerial systems, and manufacturer of UAVs.

Shield is also starting to build some serious momentum. Building off of the Series F they raised in 2023, in 2024 they were selected for a $198M Coast Guard IDIQ for their V-BAT aircraft, won a contract with NAVAIR to integrate their Hivemind AI pilot into a Kratos BQM-177A, and announced a partnership with Palantir.

Epirus

CEO & Key People: Andy Lowery, Mick Jaggers, Dan Kultran
Stage: Series C
Founded: 2018
Torrance, CA
Developing high-power microwave directed energy systems for counter-electronics and counter-UAS.

In December of 2023, Epirus had a leadership shakeup and promoted COO Andy Lowery to CEO. After weathering some layoffs, they seem to have righted the ship, earning a $17M contract with the US Army and a $5.5M contract with the Office of Naval Research for their high power microwave technology.

Chaos Industries

CEO & Key People: John Tenet, Bo Marr, Brett Cummings
Stage: Series B
Founded: 2022
Redondo Beach, CA
Building coherent distributed network technology to improve sensing and effects for defense.

While Chaos still maintains a high degree of secrecy about their products, they announced their coherent distributed network product this year, and raised a $145M Series B led by Accel over the summer.

Mach Industries

CEO & Key People: Ethan Thornton
Stage: Series A
Founded: 2020
Huntington Beach, CA
Creating advanced energetics and propulsion systems for defense and aerospace applications, enabling higher performance and precision in critical missions.

Mach Industries makes the LA Hard Tech 50 list in 2024 for moving their entire company from Austin, TX to Huntington Beach in Orange County, adding to Anduril and turning OC into a bonafide hard tech hub.

Firestorm Labs

CEO & Key People: Dan Magy, Chad McCoy
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2022
San Diego, CA
Developing mission-adaptable aerial vehicles that can be customized and manufactured at the edge.

Firestorm announced a $12.5M financing round led by Lockheed Martin earlier this year to accelerate their plans to make edge-manufacturable UAV systems.

Castelion

CEO & Key People: Bryon Hargis, Sean Pitt, Andrew Kreitz
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2022
El Segundo, CA
Designing and manufacturing hypersonic missiles and subsystems with rapid design iteration.

Earlier this year, Castelion conducted their first prototype missile test on their path to building next-generation hypersonic missiles, and also raised important unannounced financing.

Swarm Aero

CEO & Key People: Danny Goodman, Peter Kalogiannis
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2022
Oxnard, CA
Designer and manufacturer of modular UAVs for collaborative autonomy in communications-denied environments.

Earlier this year, Swarm moved their company from the Bay Area to Oxnard and built a new manufacturing facility. They also won a contract award from the DIU to build autonomous coordination solutions

CX2

CEO & Key People: Nathan Mintz, Porter Smith, Mark Tregarne, Lee Thompson
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2024
El Segundo, CA
Builder of advanced RF platforms designed to enhance situational awareness and communications on the battlefield.

Serial defense-tech entrepreneur came out of stealth with his new RF defense venture CX2, having raised a $15M seed round co-led by 8VC and Andreessen Horowitz

Neros

CEO & Key People: Soren Monroe-Anderson, Olaf Hichwa
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2023
El Segundo, CA
Designing and manufacturing American-made FPV drones to enhance unmanned defense capabilities for the U.S. military and allied forces.

Neros announced the closing of their $10.9M seed round led by Sequoia Capital, and moved to a larger facility in El Segundo.

Picogrid

CEO & Key People: Zane Mountcastle, Martin Slosarik
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2020
El Segundo, CA
Developer of a unified data integration layer that connects sensors, cameras and autonomous systems, backed by a suite of native hardware platforms.

Picogrid announced their first delivery in the Space Force’s Rapid Resilient Command and Control (R2C2) IDIQ, and announced their $12M seed round led by Initialized Capital.

Manufacturing & Industrial Automation

Hadrian

CEO & Key People: Chris Power
Stage: Series B
Founded: 2020
Torrance, CA
Software-defined, automated factory producing high-precision machined parts for aerospace and defense.

Hadrian kicked off 2024 announcing a whopping $117M Series B round with new participation from RTX and support from insiders. Later this year, they made their first major acquisition, acquiring Datum Source, a parts procurement platform. They plan to expand and build their second factory soon.

GrayMatter Robotics

CEO & Key People: Ariyan Kabir
Stage: Series B
Founded: 2020
Gardena, CA
Creating AI-driven robotic systems to assist with repetitive, labor-intensive tasks in high-mix manufacturing, from football helmets to fighter jets, from fire trucks to submarines.

GrayMatter announced a $45M Series B round led by Wellington Management this year, and will use the capital to expand their LA headquarters and accelerate their ability to meet customer demands.

Nominal

CEO & Key People: Cameron McCord, Bryce Strauss, Jason Hoch
Stage: Series A
Founded: 2022
Culver City, CA
Developer of an engineering observability platform to improve testing, reliability, and performance monitoring for hardware systems.

Nominal came out of stealth this year, announcing a $20M Series A led by General Catalyst that happened this year, and a $7.5M seed round led by Lux last year. They also moved the company’s headquarters and largest center of mass from Austin, TX to Culver City, CA.

First Resonance

CEO & Key People: Karan Talati
Stage: Series B
Founded: 2020
Los Angeles, CA
Developer of next-generation manufacturing systems software for rapid, iterative, and AI-augmented hardware manufacturing.

While First Resonance has been out of the public eye this year, CEO Karan Talati has done great ecosystem building work in the hard tech community, and the company has been continuing to make important commercial advancements, serving customers and building connective tissue across the entire industry.

Sift

CEO & Key People: Karthik Gollapudi, Austin Spiegel
Stage: Series A
Founded: 2022
El Segundo, CA
Developer of an observability platform for hardware sensor data, enabling engineers to accelerate development and streamline data reviews.

Sift announced a $17.5M Series A round led by GV earlier this year and has signed customers including Impulse Space, K2 Space, JetZero, Astrolab, and Mach Industries.

Senra Systems

CEO & Key People: Jordan Black, Ben Shanahan
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2023
Redondo Beach, CA
Streamlined manufacturer of wire harnesses, enabling convenient, transparent, and rapid delivery.

Senra Systems has been more quiet this year, but has made important unannounced strides in both customer partnerships and technology development.

Layup Parts

CEO & Key People: Zack Eakin, Elisa Suarez, Hanno Kappen
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2024
Huntington Beach, CA
Producing advanced composite materials and components for aerospace, defense, and high-performance industrial applications using innovative fabrication processes.

Layup was founded in January of this year by a team of ex-Anduril, SpaceX, and Boring Company leaders, and closed a $10M seed round led by Founders Fund.

Galvanick

CEO & Key People: Josh Steinman, Feliks Pleszczynski, Brandon Park
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2021
Culver City, CA
Extended detection and response platform for securing industrial operations from cyberattacks.

We won’t steal their thunder, but Josh Steinman and the Galvanick team have been firing on all cylinders and unlocked some major unannounced commercial partnerships this year.

Rangeview

CEO & Key People: Cameron Schiller, Aeden Gasser-Brennan
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2020
El Segundo, CA
Automated foundry that uses robotics and materials science to improve investment casting of metal parts.

Rangeview fully saturated the capacity of their El Segundo factory this year, and are now scaling into a larger factory. They manufactured parts for dozens of critical DOD programs.

Zoo

CEO & Key People: Jessie Frazelle, Jordan Noone
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2021
Inglewood, CA
Developer of generative CAD software to accelerate design iteration and optimization for complex engineering challenges.

Prior to 2024, Zoo was known as KittyCAD. Early this year, they rebranded the company to Zoo, retaining KittyCAD as the brand name for their CAD studio, and announced their ML API, ML-ephant. They released their text-to-CAD tool to the public with a great reception.

Dirac

CEO & Key People: Fil Aronshtein, Peter Weiss
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2022
El Segundo, CA
Developer of an intuitive work instructions platform for manufacturing and industrial teams to improve process efficiency and reduce errors.

Dirac was founded in New York City, but in 2024, founder Fil Aronshtein knew he needed to be based in “the Gundo” to more actively participate in the movement he had become a key part of. Dirac secured an office in El Segundo, hired half the growing team there, raised additional capital, and announced a partnership with Hadrian.

Shinkei Systems

CEO & Key People: Saif Khawaja
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2022
El Segundo, CA
Developer of robotics-enabled fish processing solutions that improve efficiency, improve quality, and minimize waste.

Shinkei is yet another startup that moved from the East Coast to El Segundo to tap into the exceptional talent pool in the South Bay. After moving to El Segundo, they announced that they closed their $6M seed round led by Cantos with participation from 8VC.

Open X

CEO & Key People: Cody James
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2019
Long Beach, CA
Career-defining technical skills development programs for aerospace, manufacturing, and engineering.

Open X graduated from building software-for-hardware to actual hardware in 2024. Founder Cody James announced their new COLAB product, a containerized CNC and metal fabrication shop that can be deployed to military bases to rapidly produce parts on site and help train army engineers and technicians.

Energy & Critical Resources

Rivian

CEO & Key People: RJ Scaringe
Stage: Public
Founded: 2009
Irvine, CA
Designer and manufacturer of electric consumer vehicles and fleet delivery vehicles.

Rivian made huge announcements on both the commercial and product side this year. Volkswagen announced a partnership and $1B investment into the company, with an additional $4B expected to be funded through 2026. Rivian also announced several new products, including the R2, a midsized SUV, and R3, a midsized crossover, to compete in additional market segments.

Zeitview

CEO & Key People: Dan Burton
Stage: Series E
Founded: 2014
Santa Monica, CA
Advanced inspection software capturing visual data to accelerate the transition to renewable energy and sustainable critical infrastructure.

In July, Zeitview announced their acquisition of Clearsight Assets, which will allow them to augment their drone inspection platform with Clearsight’s utility data analytics and AI models to become a leader in electric grid inspection.

Radiant

CEO & Key People: Doug Bernauer, Bob Urberger
Stage: Series C
Founded: 2019
El Segundo, CA
Designer and manufacturer of 1.2 Megawatt scale nuclear fission modular microreactors for austere environments and off-grid backup use-cases.

Radiant completed the front-end engineering and experiment design (FEEED) phase of their Kaleidos nuclear reactor in collaboration with Idaho National Lab, a critical milestone on the way to completing their first reactor in 2026. Building off of their technical success, Radiant closed a $100M Series C financing round led by DCVC.

Harbinger Motors

CEO & Key People: John Harris, Phillip Weicker, Will Eberts, Ben Dusastre
Stage: Series A
Founded: 2021
Garden Grove, CA
Electrification of commercial and specialty vehicle segments with a vertically integrated electric vehicle platform

Harbinger announced that they received over $400M in customer pre-orders for their commercial and specialty electric vehicle platform. They also secured a major undisclosed financing round.

Antares Industries

CEO & Key People: Jordan Bramble, Julia DeWahl
Stage: Series A
Founded: 2023
Redondo Beach, CA
Designer and manufacturer of kilowatt-scale micro-fission reactors for defense and space applications.

Antares announced their $30M Series A round led by Caffeinated Capital and Altcap this year. Additionally, they announced that they have secured $4.3M of government contracts this year.

Rainmaker

CEO & Key People: Augustus Doricko
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2023
El Segundo, CA
Addressing water scarcity with drone-enabled cloud seeding weather modification technology.

Rainmaker and founder Augustus Doricko have become a lightning rod for the El Segundo tech ecosystem. Rainmaker announced their $6.3M seed round this year, and have made important undisclosed strides with customers, technological development, and fundraising. They recently expanded to an additional office in Oregon to take advantage of weather for more rapid development cycles.

Terraform Industries

CEO & Key People: Casey Handmer
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2021
Burbank, CA
Creating modular synthetic fuel production systems powered by renewable energy to enable scalable carbon capture and utilization.

Terraform demonstrated the first successful synthesis of natural gas earlier this year using their integrated solar power, DAC, electrolysis, and Sabatier reactor.

Hgen

CEO & Key People: Molly Yang, Colin Ho
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2021
Hawthorne, CA
Generating low-cost clean hydrogen to decarbonize heavy industry with alkaline electrolysis technology.

Hgen announced their $5M seed round led by Seven Seven Six earlier this year.

General Galactic

CEO & Key People: Halen Mattison, Luke Neise
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2023
El Segundo, CA
Modular systems for on-site synthetic natural gas generation to support energy independence and industrial applications.

General Galactic announced an $8M seed round co-led by Refactor and Harpoon Ventures earlier this year, and revealed that their pilot system is producing 2,000 liters of methane per day.

Valar Atomics

CEO & Key People: Isaiah Taylor
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2023
El Segundo, CA
Designer and manufacturer of compact nuclear reactors to power synthetic hydrocarbon generation.

Founder Isaiah Taylor has a vision for the future of energy, and went all in, moving his family from Idaho to El Segundo. After raising pre-seed and seed capital, Valar Atomics has expanded to their second facility, and recruited the former President of Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC) to become their Chief Nuclear Officer.

Karman Industries

CEO & Key People: David Tearse, Chiranjeev Kalra
Stage: Pre-seed
Founded: 2024
Long Beach, CA
Developing advanced electric heat pumps inspired by rocket turbomachinery to replace traditional industrial boilers, aiming to reduce manufacturing costs and eliminate onsite CO₂ emissions.

Karman Industries came out of stealth in 2024, with Riot Ventures EIR David Tearse announcing their $4M pre-seed round.

Durin

CEO & Key People: Ted Feldmann
Stage: Pre-seed
Founded: 2024
El Segundo, CA
Developing autonomous drilling systems to improve efficiency and productivity in mining operations

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2024 Operators of the Year

• Andrew Berg, Head of Business Development & Sales, Apex

• Ben Dusastre, CFO, Harbinger

• Neil Mason, Head of Mechanical Engineering, Antares

• Andrew McCalip, Head of R&D, Varda

• Connor Poole, CTO, OurSky

• Eric Romo, President & COO, Impulse Space

• Mark Seidel, CFO, True Anomaly

• Victoria Shivanandan, COO, Radiant

• Basil Siddiqui, VP of Engineering, Hadrian

• Sean Wood, Head of Hardware, Neros

2024 Ecosystem Builders of the Year

• Augustus Doricko, CEO, Rainmaker

• Nathan Mintz, CEO, CX2

• Xander Oltmann, Founder and GP, Commodity Capital

• Cameron Schiller, CEO, Rangeview

• Karan Talati, CEO, First Resonance

We created a database of the LA Hard Tech 50 and honorable mentions. You can also find the companies on a map. Think we missed something? Want to flag founders, operators, or ecosystem builders for next year? Let us know here.

The conversation highlighted that in hardware, targets vary greatly across companies. No two companies had the same guiding metrics and many CEOs were honest about their reluctance – and sometimes disdain – for the ones they use. The goals varied, and it seemed like everyone had a different reason for choosing what to focus on.

Then, Erik explained his team’s north star and why they use it. When he shared, everything clicked. He unlocked the generalizable insights and ideas I am always looking for to share with the founders I work with.

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Erik explained how their north star aligned with customer needs, united his team and ultimately drove the company forward. You could immediately see how every member of Plus One Robotics contributed to improving the number and how it simplified decision-making when priorities competed for attention.

I followed up with Erik to learn more about finding his north star. As we enter annual planning season, I hope his experience helps you find one that serves you as well as “Continually increasing our customers’ picks per day” serves Plus One Robotics.

The Journey to a North Star Metric

Plus One Robotics develops AI-based computer vision and robotic systems to offer automated material handling solutions for logistics and ecommerce customers. They knew when they started that if they could build a machine that works, big players would buy it. (They told them this.) So, they focused on building a machine that works.

It won’t surprise you to hear that early on, Erik and the team focused on technical outputs like vision processing time and time between failures. As a developer of novel systems, they set technology-related goals, and product development guided their work. Erik says,

“One of the technical outputs we obsessed over in the early days was ‘vision processing time,’ the duration from when the camera snapped an image until we commanded the robot's next move. We wanted to ensure ours was the fastest in the market. This became less important over time and now we never talk about it.”

We hear this all the time. Metrics change as companies evolve and learn more about what matters most. Later in Plus One’s journey they focused on sales targets and other commercial goals. Many of them were S.M.A.R.T., but they still weren’t right.

Center Your Customer’s Jobs to be Done

A turning point came when Plus One shifted its perspective from its technology to its customers. Businesses exist to serve customers, and focusing on them was clarifying. Plus One asked themselves,

“What do our customers ask us to deliver?”

“What is the customer hiring this electromechanical laborer to accomplish?”

“Why would they hire this automaton over another?”

Plus One’s logistics customers care about one thing above all else: moving goods efficiently. They must process as many packages as possible within their cutoff windows (before the plane takes off).

Asking these questions surfaced a more customer-centric way of looking at the technology. To their customers, robots are hired, not bought. They would hire anyone who walked in the door and moved 3,000 packages per hour. That would be superhuman. So, Plus One built that robot.

Volume matters to their customers, so Plus One made volume matter to them. Instead of orienting the technology goals around features like vision processing time, they focused on customer goals like packages moved.

That’s why “Continually increasing our customers’ picks per day” is the company’s north star.

A Goal Everyone Can Pursue

Increasing picks per day aligned the company’s and customers’ goals and had a unifying effect across the company. Unlike vision processing time, picks per day is a metric that everyone across the company could impact somehow. It’s not an isolated metric for a handful of software developers that makes no difference to everyone else.

Sales teams could rally around it because adding new accounts meant adding picks per day. Engineers could rally around it because improving performance or increasing uptime meant adding picks per day. Support teams could rally around it because taking that call from a customer meant adding picks per day. You could find paths to improving picks per day in legal, finance, talent, or any other department.

Erik says, “When it became clear that their metric became our metric, it was motivating.” The team aligned around it, and the effects were immediate. Engineers wrote better software, sales focused on finding the right customers, and even tough conversations with clients became easier to navigate.

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So what makes a great north star?

Like all good goals, a good north star is simple, measurable, and tied to the company’s mission. A great north star has additional qualities that make it powerful:

1. Customer-centric: The metric helps guide the company toward what matters most to its customers. For Erik, customers cared about maximizing throughput, and his team’s metric directly aligns with that goal.

2. Unifying Impact: Everyone in the company – from engineers to salespeople and talent to finance – can influence the metric. Shared accountability creates alignment and camaraderie across teams.

3. Storytelling: A strong metric tells a story. Hitting revenue targets or churning customers is often discussed in dollars and cents. “Picks per day” takes that same sales win and creates a narrative around the customer's goals. It transforms churned revenue into a story about how the solution failed to deliver value.

How can your company identify the right one?

The first step to solving your problem is admitting the problem exists.

For a while, Erik and his team thought their motto #robotsworkpeoplerule WAS their north star. Erik says, “I was so into this motto that I didn’t see the need for anything beyond that.” But it isn’t a call to action. It isn’t measurable. It isn’t S.M.A.R.T. in any way. And it certainly isn’t customer-centric or unifying for the team.

As you enter annual planning mode and consider your guiding light and the metrics to focus on, here’s a starting point:

1. Listen to Your Customers: What are they asking you to deliver? What pain does your company solve for them? How might you align your company goals with the goals of your customers?

2. Make It Broadly Applicable: Consider whether every team in your company can influence the goal. If it’s only relevant to one department, it still may be worth tracking, but it may not do enough to unify the organization.

3. Keep It Simple: Your metric should be easy to understand and explain. If you’re not already measuring it, you’re probably overthinking it. Clarity fosters alignment.

Remember, it’s okay if your metric evolves. Erik’s team didn’t land on “Continually increasing our customers’ picks per day” overnight, and metrics may shift as your business grows. The key is to start with something meaningful and iterate as needed.

The right north star is more than a number. It’s a unifying force that aligns teams, clarifies priorities, and drives focus.

Ask yourself: What’s the one thing that matters most to my customers and my team?

Start there, and let the process guide you to your own north star.

Thank you to Erik Nieves for the masterclass on choosing a north star metric. His company, Plus One Robotics, is hiring! You can learn more here.

Power utilities face growing pressure to reduce outages while extreme climate events place new challenges on outdated systems. Water pipelines leak millions of gallons every day, wasting an increasingly scarce resource while municipalities and service companies scramble to repair the pipes. HVAC systems in millions of homes are pushed to their limits, often breaking down when families need them most.

The challenges impact our daily lives. And yet, in many industries, the labor needed to inspect, maintain, and repair these systems is becoming harder to find.

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A Growing Labor Crisis

Infrastructure maintenance has long relied on skilled technicians and field workers to deliver reliable performance of our critical systems. Unfortunately, the workforce that looks after this technology and our built world is aging, too. The baby boomers who make up most of the labor force are hitting retirement age, and younger generations didn’t enter these industries at the same rate. The trend continues today.

Labor shortages force these companies to do more with fewer people. From water to power to waste management and more, infrastructure companies across the country are desperately trying to monitor, improve, and maintain their systems. They don’t have the people to do it, and their customers feel the pain.

I’ve written about the impact labor shortages are having on infrastructure companies before. More than ever, CEOs of these massive companies are turning to robots to evolve their business models and hopefully, maintain their critical operations.

A Technological Tipping Point

The good news is that recent advances in edge computing, AI, and communications infrastructure have opened the door to a transformation.

Edge computing can bring sophisticated AI models directly to devices at the frontlines of infrastructure management. Multimodal sensors gather data from the physical world, and new inference models can interpret that data at the edge to provide real-time insights and automation. Satellites, LoRa, and other new communication platforms unlock greater connectivity and access to infrastructure sensing and monitoring in even the most remote locations.

Customer desperation for solutions to their labor issues coinciding with technology advancements in robotics and edge computing create an unprecedented opportunity to rethink our infrastructure. Enter BrightAI.

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BrightAI, the Physical AI company

BrightAI is tackling some of our oldest and most critical problems using the newest advancements in edge computing and autonomy. They partner with the world’s largest organizations in HVAC, water pipeline repair, pest control, power lines, gas compression, waste management, and more. With 250,000+ AI endpoints deployed across 25,000+ locations, they are already making 100M+ predictions about the state of our national infrastructure annually.

BrightAI leads this charge by delivering hardware and software that transform our infrastructure into proactively monitored digital systems. Their flagship platform, Stateful OS, provides customers with three deployed modalities that can meet a variety of field and operational requirements.

1. Out-of-the-box sensors can be deployed and integrated in minutes for 24/7 monitoring to produce fully automated real-time insights about the state of infrastructure sites and assets.

2. Workforce wearables and AI copilots can give over-burdened labor forces the operations knowledge graphs and interactive AI that improves the quality of their work and their quality of life.

3. Advanced robots can automate labor-intensive or dangerous work, often better than their human counterparts.

The whole system is underpinned by a foundational physical AI model, a cloud and edge computing platform called Stateful OS, and a library of edge AI models and knowledge graphs that can be deployed across sectors to serve varying customer use cases and requirements.

Customer Value Creation

This isn’t just AI for AI’s sake. It’s practical and useful technology designed with customer needs in mind.

Take Azuria Water Solutions, for example. Before adopting BrightAI’s solution, Azuria would rely on trained technicians using remote-controlled vehicles with onboard CCTV feeds to repair pipes. Now, technicians can drop fully autonomous systems in the pipes – sometimes several in different locations – to complete the repairs.

BrightAI didn’t just hand over sensor payloads to improve the technician’s CCTV feed or computer vision AI to help identify pipe anomalies. They embedded themselves in the field to understand Azuria’s workflows, co-create solutions, and most importantly, unlock top- and bottom-line value. The solution that Azuria and BrightAI developed together on Stateful OS has the potential to rehabilitate water pipelines autonomously, improve Azuria’s labor force utilization, and deliver better results to the municipalities and residents who depend on this water pipeline infrastructure.

BrightAI doesn’t just sell tools. Their end-to-end product suite unlocks lower costs, higher quality service, and greater reliability for its customers. Drones inspecting power lines for damage, mold-sniffing robots that can detect degradation of power pole foundations, wearable AI copilots guiding technicians through complex repairs, or autonomous robots rehabilitating aging pipelines. BrightAI doesn’t just monitor infrastructure—it automates and orchestrates action, making it smarter and more resilient for all who use it.

Announcing Upfront’s Investment in BrightAI

BrightAI has earned over $100M over five years as a bootstrapped company. Now, I’m excited to announce that they’ve raised their first outside capital from us at Upfront.

Every investment is a story—and the best ones start with a relationship.

I first met Alex Hawkinson while doing diligence on a company that eventually became an Upfront portfolio company. He was the company’s board chairman and a co-founder, and I wanted to hear the origin story and learn about his plans to stay involved in the business after we invested.

I learned in our first conversations that Alex is a visionary technologist working at the cutting edge his whole career. After selling SmartThings, the early smart home IoT businesses he co-founded, to Samsung, he helped scale the platform to one of the largest IoT platforms in the world.

He is also a talent magnet. Alex has recruited engineers and leaders who have also been at the forefront of technology advancements for the last two decades. Most notable is his CTO, Kiran Bharwani. After launching and leading Caterpillar’s autonomous vehicle team and achieving L4 autonomy in mining, Kiran founded the ADAS team at Rivian, going from clean sheet to IPO. He joined BrightAI to build foundational AI and autonomy systems that can improve our built world.

But technology alone wasn’t the reason we invested. Before I invest, I always ask myself, “Who is this person? What motivates them to pursue this company? What kind of partner will they be?”

I’ve been lucky to work on two companies with Alex before investing in BrightAI and joining the board. With Alex, the answers have always been clear. He’s the CEO who combines ambitious vision with crisp execution and notable humility. Building his next IoT company – combining all his previous experience to go after one of our most important challenges as a country – is what he was born to do.

We at Upfront Ventures and I are excited to join Alex on this journey. It’s Day 1 (it’s always Day 1), and the future is bright.

Sound familiar? It seems like every advancement in automation invites predictions of another industry where humans will be thrust aside by cheaper robots that perform better, work faster, and don’t whine so much.

We conjure images of humanoid overlords walking into our workplaces, tapping us on the shoulder, and waving goodbye as we walk out the door clutching our boxes of tchotchkes and family photos. 

I’m here to tell you we’re going to be okay. 

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In my experience talking to founders of robotics companies and their customers, neither are looking to displace humans. Instead, customers are desperately looking for robots that can step in where they can no longer find humans to do the jobs in the first place. Robot adoption begins when people aren’t available.

Did you know some pick-and-pack warehouse workers walk 10+ miles per shift? Or that foundry workers in head-to-toe reflective suits wrangle liquid metals that reach over 1500°C? Or that long-distance truck drivers have higher rates of obesity, heart disease, cancer, and depression?

As you might imagine, these physically demanding industries have severe labor shortages. Here are a few more: mining, construction, manufacturing, shipbuilding, machining, tool and die-making, wire harnessing, textiles, sawmills, agriculture, transportation, water pipeline repair, pest control, waste management, oil and gas extraction, HVAC, welding, forestry and logging, water treatment… the list goes on. 

Sure, it’s unsettling to see a futuristic humanoid dancing to electro. But that’s not what robots look like in practice. At least not yet. When it comes to everyday applications, robots mostly do things people don’t want to do anymore: crawling through pipes, digging up mines, and moving things over and over and over again. This is not just a technology issue. It’s a quality-of-life issue.

CEOs in these industries say the same things. 

“People don’t want to do these jobs anymore.” 

“My labor force is aging and I can’t find young people to replace them.”

“Our growth is throttled by labor and our ability to deliver our services.” 

“We need new technology to continue operating, and we need it now.”

Our national infrastructure is aging as much as the workforce, so the timing for these labor availability issues couldn’t be worse. But this isn’t the first time physical labor jobs have started to disappear because we can no longer afford the labor. 

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Stonemasonry and labor shortages

Stonemasonry is one of the oldest trades in human civilization. Stonemasons are responsible for pyramids, Medieval castles, Renaissance buildings, and museum-defining sculptures. They hand-carved the columns, archways, window surrounds, and decorative facades that give each architectural period its distinctiveness. You might say they are also responsible for your influencer friend who loves Parisian architecture and can’t stop posing in front of buildings there. 

This thread from The Cultural Tutor illuminates how architecture evolved from a maximalist design with intricate stonework to our inescapable modern architecture. A quote from architect Adolf Loos in 1908 stands out.

“Ornament means squandered manpower.” Manpower.

I am not qualified to make sense of changes in architectural trends throughout history; myriad confounding factors contributed. But as the need for more housing, offices, and indoor space expanded over the last 150 years, one thing is clear: manpower couldn’t keep up.

The Sagrada Familia in Barcelona is still under construction 142 years after breaking ground. Wars and funding issues have slowed things down. The building's interior and exterior stonework are one-of-a-kind. Given the scarcity of stonemasons and the increasing costs of stonework today, you have to wonder: Will they ever get it done?

Notre Dame, the Taj Mahal, Petra, and many of the world’s most famous structures were built by hand. It’s hard to believe humans ever pulled them off, and there is no way we could build them today. We don’t have the manpower. We can't keep up with the demand for affordable housing, so we can forget about having the stonemasons to carve intricate details into rock that could grace the side of a building.

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Maybe the robots will save us

Enter Monumental Labs. Monumental Labs is a robotics company building AI-enabled robotic stone carving factories. They are ‘bending the cost curve on stone facades and ornament…to create buildings of beauty and lasting value.’ 

To create beauty and lasting value. This is the promise of robots and AI.

Like the industries mentioned above, Monumental Labs isn’t replacing existing stonemasons, relieving them of their duties to beautify our cities. They are working with the remaining stonemasons to speed up their work. They perform less detail-oriented, more labor-intensive processes. If they’re successful, and I hope they are, Monumental Labs may bring back a whole craft. With this technology, artists responsible for preserving these skills can make buildings beautiful again.

What a mission! At a time when people are worried about technology crushing our souls (see: social media), this company is building cutting-edge robots that can reveal our humanity and beautify our physical world.

I’m not blind to the challenges we face with robots. I know that in some cases, robots will displace unsuspecting workers. But I’ve also spoken to a water pipeline repair company that can boost worker productivity with autonomous robots to serve more municipalities. I’ve encountered a waste management company that can improve safety by using sensors and edge AI models instead of humans to monitor hazardous gases. Labor availability has been a concern in these industries, and robots can help deliver critical services.

As technology progresses we tend to celebrate new things that have never been done before. But what moves us forward are the inventions that help us get things done. The promise of a more technologically advanced society does not have to be an overly industrialized Wall-E version of the world. It can be more human. We can automate the mundane and create time for what matters.

I imagine a world where the pursuit of new technology both advances our ability and expresses our humanity. Let’s create that version. 

Thanks to all the founders and collaborators who gave me feedback on this. My ideas are always evolving. If you’re working on robots, automation, or industrial AI that can create lasting value in our physical world, I’d love to hear from you.

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Introducing Sift

CEO & Key People: Karthik Gollapudi, Austin Spiegel
Founded: 2022
El Segundo, CA
Developer of telemetry operations software and data observability platform to enhance real-time anomaly detection and accelerate tool and process integrations.

Sift is transforming the world of real-time data with a new observability stack for telemetry. They help companies collect and process real-time data from sensors and components deployed to hardware.

Telemetry data management is a problem in complex hardware development. Mismanaged testing and development of embedded software can lead to catastrophes in high-stakes environments like spacecraft maneuvers, weapons deployment, and nuclear reactor operations.

For example, Boeing’s Starliner demo mission in 2019 failed to rendezvous with the ISS due to software anomalies. The bugs caused the spacecraft to burn to an incorrect orbital trajectory, reportedly costing the company hundreds of millions. But successful deployment of software and well-executed telemetry management can result in wonders of engineering.

Sift’s platform relieves burdensome software testing responsibilities, giving the broader hardware community tools to accelerate development time and reduce catastrophes. The platform includes observability tools covering data visualization, code-free automated review and insights, instant report generation for telemetry data, and a data pipeline product specifically built to handle data retrieval and consolidate data stores.

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Founders Karthik Gollapudi and Austin Spiegel bring experience with these tools from SpaceX. They built flight software for the Dragon spacecraft and telemetry tools for Starlink, so they are no strangers to critical telemetry and data review tools. They also know how to deliver mission success. When they saw organizations struggling to manage these tools, they knew they had to build a better system for the rest of the industry. We’ve heard this story before from ex-SpaceX engineers.

Founded in 2022, Sift is well-armed and moving fast to deliver on its vision. They recently closed a $17.5M Series A led by GV, following a seed round only a year ago from LA-based funds Riot Ventures and Fika Ventures. They serve a number of high-profile hard tech customers, including Astranis, Astrolab, Mach Industries, Parallel Systems, and more, with their promise to accelerate innovation and reliability for all.

Q&A with CEO, Karthik Gollapudi

What had to be true so Sift could exist? Why now?

The rise of IT monitoring tools created a blind spot in hardware observability. As industries poured resources into tracking application performance, the tools for managing complex hardware systems stagnated. This gap became critical as hardware complexity in aerospace, autonomous vehicles, and other sectors skyrocketed. Sift emerged to bridge this divide, offering a solution built for the intricate needs of modern hardware systems.

How will the world change when you succeed?

When Sift succeeds, we'll see a paradigm shift in how complex machines are built and operated. Engineers will have unprecedented insight into their systems, catching potential failures before they occur. This will accelerate product cycles, reduce costs, and most importantly, enhance safety across industries. We're not just improving efficiency; we're enabling the next generation of technological breakthroughs by giving engineers the tools to push boundaries confidently.

What has been harder than you expected about building Sift?

Introducing a new paradigm in a well-established industry has been our biggest challenge. The industries we sell into have deep-rooted practices and systems in place. We've learned that demonstrating the value of a new approach requires patience, clear communication, and a willingness to collaborate closely with potential customers.

Another unexpected hurdle has been building our team. We're looking for a unique blend of skills: deep expertise in mission-critical systems combined with the agility and mindset of a startup. This intersection of talents is rare, and cultivating a culture that nurtures both aspects has been a complex but rewarding journey.

These challenges have pushed us to be more creative and adaptable. They've also reinforced the importance of our mission, as we work to create tools that complement and enhance existing workflows.

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What do you know now that you wish you knew when you started Sift?

When we started Sift, we knew we had the experience to tackle technical challenges. We anticipated the engineering hurdles, but we didn’t account for how demanding it would be to build a go-to-market strategy and team — it’s every bit as complex, especially when you factor in the human element. 

For technical challenges, you can check off every box, solve every edge case, and prove it works. But when you’re introducing something completely new, especially in a deeply entrenched industry, you’re dealing with people’s emotions. People who have their own processes, biases, and a lot at stake in trying something different. It’s not just about showing them that the technology works — it’s about creating those “a-ha” moments where they truly see the value in their world, for their specific challenges. We had to learn that, the human aspect of bringing a new solution to market takes time, and sometimes that’s the harder battle. Getting the market to embrace a new approach requires great engineering — but it also requires empathy, storytelling, and patience. Those are muscles we’ve had to build along the way.

What motivates you to build this company every day?

The potential to reshape the future of technology drives us. At SpaceX, we saw how the right tools could transform an industry. With Sift, we're taking that vision further — we're not just improving one company, we're supercharging multiple sectors.

Today's engineers are building machines of mind-bending complexity – from reusable rockets to autonomous cars. But the tools to develop and operate these marvels are stuck in the past. That's the gap Sift is filling. We're creating an observability platform that turns torrents of machine data into actionable insights. 

Every day, we're pushing the boundaries of what's possible, and we're working to create a future where progress is limited only by imagination, not tools. Whether it’s tackling climate change or launching humanity to Mars, Sift will be woven into the fabric of these groundbreaking achievements.

Why is LA the right place for you to build your business?

El Segundo, in Los Angeles' South Bay, is like the modern-day Florence of hard tech, where the next generation of modern machines is being built. This area has been pivotal in advancing aviation and space technology for decades. It's where we honed our skills at SpaceX, grappling with the complex challenges of frontier engineering.

Our location provides unparalleled access to customers and a rich talent pool. In fact, our first office was within a customer's facility, allowing us to deeply embed ourselves in their day-to-day operations. This level of proximity and collaboration is unique to the ecosystem here, where the lines between customer and partner often blur. It's enabled us to gather immediate feedback and truly understand the challenges we're solving.

Behind every successful person there are people who play or have played significant roles in making it happen. Who’s one person who has helped you get to this point? How have they helped?

Austin and I complement each other perfectly, and I couldn’t have done this without him. His ability to build scalable data infrastructure and solve complex technical challenges has been the backbone of everything we’ve done at Sift. For example, his work on our schema agnostic data ingestion system — which can ingest data from any subsystem with minimal configuration — was a breakthrough that allowed us to manage data at scale in a way that hadn't been seen before.

At the same time, Austin trusted my focus on the customer side — on understanding user pain points and designing solutions that fit real-world needs. This dynamic, where we each bring our own strengths, has allowed Sift to grow into a platform that not only works technically but also resonates with the engineers who use it.

This dynamic was clear when we sold into Astranis. Their application software team resonated with Austin’s technical expertise, while the flight software engineers connected with my deep understanding of user pain points. Our combination of technical pedigree and user empathy set us apart and made us the right fit.

We’ve been able to push boundaries because we complement each other so well, and I couldn’t have done this without him.

Thank you to Karthik and Austin for spending time with us! This team is doing a lot for the LA hard tech community with both their product and their community building.

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Introducing Epsilon3

CEO & Key People: Laura Crabtree, Max Mednik
Founded: 2021
Los Angeles, CA
Developer of a software suite for complex engineering, testing, and operations.

Epsilon3 is a promising company in the growing software-for-hardware niche. Their software platform helps users manage engineering, assembly, testing, and operations processes. They provide tools for procedure management, real-time collaboration, automated reporting, and data analysis.

This comprehensive suite of tools streamlines engineering operations for companies building complex hardware in aerospace, defense, energy, automotive, mining, and other critical infrastructure sectors. By standardizing engineering and testing processes and improving collaboration between users, Epsilon3’s purpose-built software saves time and money for some of the world’s most ambitious companies.

Software tools for complex hardware development are becoming essential for critical infrastructure companies. On top of delivering novel systems, they face pressure from customers and regulators to meet precise requirements and deliver on ambitious timelines. In a world where partners expect better, faster, and cheaper, every operating advantage matters, and Epsilon3’s software aims to deliver it.

Epsilon3’s software enhances collaboration, reduces the risk of costly engineering mistakes, and accelerates innovation. Their platform, which integrates data management, analysis, and workflow automation, can play a vital role in enabling companies to mitigate risks more effectively. They’ve had success with customers in aerospace and defense and oil and gas, where several disciplines collaborate on single systems and where mistakes can be extremely costly and dangerous.

The company’s founders have extensive experience in complex hardware operations. CEO Laura Crabtree was a 10-year veteran at SpaceX mission operations, and COO Max Mednik was the co-founder and COO of prominent electronic warfare startup Epirus. They earned their perspectives from space operations, the battlefield, and other high-stakes engineering environments. Now, they share an insider’s view of complex hardware development and operational management, and the motivation to build the tools that they always wanted.

Laura and Max founded Epsilon3 in LA in 2021 to support the existing ecosystem of legacy hardware engineering in the South Bay and in anticipation of the boom in entrepreneurship. They’ve raised more than $18M in Seed and Series A funding from incredible venture capital investors in hard tech and beyond. Lux Capital, MaC Venture Capital, Y Combinator, Village Global, Stage Venture Partners and others armed them to tackle their vision of enabling hardware pioneers to accelerate their exploration of the boundaries of technology.

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Q&A with CEO, Laura Crabtree

How will the world change when you succeed?

Epsilon3 was designed to support teams in high-risk industries like aerospace, manufacturing, and energy. We're passionate about helping our customers improve the efficiency and repeatability of their most complex procedures. Our goal is to help teams iterate rapidly, without compromising quality or safety. 

As organizations continue to adopt Epsilon3, the world will benefit from faster innovation and more reliable operations. For example, we love seeing commercial space launches become more routine. Epsilon3 is helping engineers build and test spacecraft, while helping ground operations teams improve mission reliability.

What motivates you to build this company every day?

Max and I have both been passionate about space exploration since we were young. During my 10 years at SpaceX, I saw how modern operational tools can help fuel rapid innovation and growth. After leaving SpaceX, I talked to dozens of people who complained about the lack of software made for space missions. Epsilon3 is the result of that. We wanted to solve problems for our friends in the space industry. It didn’t take long to realize that other high-stakes industries were in need of similar software solutions. We’re motivated by helping the world’s most innovative teams achieve their goals.

What has been harder than you expected about building Epsilon3?

We’ve learned it can be hard for older organizations to replace legacy software and outdated internal tools. While this isn’t an uncommon problem for software startups, we’re always surprised when a large aerospace company decides not to fix a broken system. Some are concerned the implementation and training process will cause too much operational downtime. Being a successful SaaS startup requires more than just building great products. We work hard to make sure Epsilon3 is easy to implement and use. Providing hands-on training and support is critical when helping customers adopt a new tool.

What do you know now that you wish you knew when you started Epsilon3?

Epsilon3 started as a small, bootstrapped engineering team focused on one core product. We learned that building new SaaS products and features requires a larger team of specialized Software Engineers. Once we hired more developers, we started releasing new features, integrations, and improvements every two weeks. 

Why is LA the right place for you to build your business?

El Segundo has a proud tradition of aerospace innovation. Over half of all satellites and vehicles in space were manufactured in El Segundo. It’s also home to the Los Angeles Air Force Base. Building a team in this part of Los Angeles makes customer visits, implementation, and training much easier.

Behind every successful person there are people who play or have played significant roles in making it happen. Who’s one person who has helped you get to this point? How have they helped?

This is going to sound cliche, but my husband. He encouraged me to take a risk on the job at SpaceX when we were just friends, then after we started dating he backed me for 11 years while I was there (during which time we got married and had 2 kids), and supported the 3 of us starting on this crazy journey of building a startup. He helped me gain the confidence I needed to take many of those leaps in my life.

Thank you Laura and the Epsilon3 team for sharing your story with us!

In 2020, Karan Talati predicted what many of us take for granted today: we are in a revolution in hardware innovation that is revitalizing American manufacturing. Karan was part of this movement at SpaceX, where both hardware and software played key roles in making it the generational company it has become today.

Some of the lesser-known keys to SpaceX’s success in manufacturing hardware at extreme levels of speed, cost, and quality are the internal software tools they built in-house. For example, Warp Drive, their homemade ERP and manufacturing system, enables them to move at previously unbelievable speeds without sacrificing safety.

Having seen what software can do at SpaceX and noticing a glaring need to bring better hardware engineering and manufacturing software to the broader hardware innovation ecosystem, Karan set out to build a solution.

The aerospace, defense, and other hardware manufacturing industries are rapidly shifting to a more dynamic and efficient production methodology. First Resonance exists to help them achieve their goals with better software.

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Introducing First Resonance

CEO & Key People: Karan Talati
Founded: 2020
Downtown Los Angeles, CA
Developer of systems software for rapid, iterative hardware manufacturing.

First Resonance’s mission is to build the software backbone that empowers hardware companies to succeed in the digital future of manufacturing. Their product ION Factory OS is a next-generation manufacturing execution system (MES) intended to power the next era of American manufacturing in aerospace, defense, robotics, energy, and other hard tech industries.

ION Factory OS

First Resonance’s flagship product is ION, a software platform that enhances manufacturing efficiency and agility by connecting all of a factory's discrete parts. ION enables real-time collaboration between engineers and technicians, accelerating decision-making feedback loops and supporting many workflows, from prototype development to full-scale production.

Traditional MES systems track the flow of inputs from raw materials through their journey into intermediate parts, subassemblies, and eventually finished products. They provide real-time control and monitoring of manufacturing operations to maximize production efficiency and ensure quality control and regulatory compliance. Factory OS transforms this MES paradigm with improved collaboration tools, better traceability and integrated supply chain functions, enhanced connectivity for IoT data, predictive planning, and seamless integrations with ERP and PLM systems.

Karan and his team have the sector experience required to lead, coming from SpaceX, Boeing, Toyota, Northrop Grumman, and more. They bring tribal knowledge into the complexities of modern manufacturing to design ION with a user-centric approach.

Picks & Shovels for American Manufacturing

First Resonance is poised to play a pivotal role in the resurgence of American manufacturing. The software helps manufacturers navigate the increasingly complex supply chain landscape. ION enhances efficiency and reduces manufacturing downtime, a critical feature when rising global conflict, deglobalization, and climate disruptions shed light on supply chain resilience. By continuously evolving to address critical supply chain challenges, First Resonance is already driving improvements in American manufacturing and complex hardware development.

Founded in DTLA in January 2020, First Resonance was early to the wave of new hardware-oriented software startups building in Southern California. They’ve gathered an enviable group of investors, including Series A lead Craft Ventures, Fika Ventures, Blue Bear Capital, Village Global, Stage Venture Partners, and more. They count roughly half of last year’s LA Hard Tech 50 list among their customers, including Varda Space Industries, Radiant Nuclear, Machina Labs, and Arc Boats, proving themselves to be an enabling technology in today’s hard tech boom.

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Q&A with CEO, Karan Talati

What had to be true so First Resonance could exist? Why now?

While technology moves fast, Silicon Valley can sometimes forget the importance of a philosophy that has driven Nintendo’s success: 枯れた技術の水平思考, or ‘Lateral Thinking with Seasoned Technology.‘ Manufacturing globalization accelerated in the 1980s and 1990s, leaving manufacturing innovation in the dark for decades. In the meanwhile, digital technologies like cloud and mobile accelerated in the 2000s and into the 2010s. The cloud, in particular, brings huge opportunities for enabling large data capture and processing, enabling many of the technologies we have come to rely on like ridesharing, social media, and more. Remember, manufacturing was left in the dark on innovation! It wasn’t until 2016 that options like AWS GovCloud became available for application innovators to develop and deploy cloud-scale workflow innovations into security-critical industries like aerospace and defense, biomedical, and more.

So while, to Silicon Valley, it may seem that we are over the cloud and mobile innovation curve, the reality is that it only became available in the mid-2010s. The need for it is accelerating into the 2020s because of the Covid pandemic and recent geopolitical changes that are forcing governments and their industrial bases to take a step back and digitize and make more efficient industries, like manufacturing, that were put on pause for 20-30 years. Furthermore, we are seeing geopolitical shifts that affect manufacturing policy for more factories distributed around the wold rather than a China-centric manufacturing policy. In addition, the IRA is incentivizing >$300bn in development and production of new energy solutions, which will lead to trillions in value. This means that the demand is there now more than ever.

How will the world change when you succeed?

Similar to what Github did for software development or what AWS did for infrastructure (storage, compute, and network), First Resonance is creating digitized abstractions for the world’s hardware engineers to be able to move information in, out, and through factory operations. When we succeed, hardware engineers and manufacturers will be able to rapidly iterate and ship hardware products rather than adhering to the slow, manual, and rigid process controls of the past. This will mean an acceleration in the forms of alternative energy, new types of space exploration and infrastructure vehicles, and more. We will power the imaginations of any who wants to build in the physical world.

What has been harder than you expected about building First Resonance?

First Resonance is serving some very serious customers that are building quality and safety-critical applications in aviation, spaceflight, nuclear energy, and more. Inherently, that comes with some difficulty. That said, we are not shy of this given our backgrounds coming from quality-critical applications such as the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft at SpaceX.

What had been harder than we thought is how quickly our customers are scaling into quality and regulatory workflows, which demand a heavier investment in our business solutions to partner with our customers. This means that the fast-paced and product development-oriented company-building playbooks are only part of the equation. Otherwise, we have to invest into key relationships that warrant high 6-figure and 7-figure ACVs (and more investment here would even allow them to go higher)

What do you know now that you wish you knew when you first started First Resonance?

As a first-time founder, I wish I had known just how much of the job involves people and organization design. Ensuring that you have the right people on the bus, they know exactly what they need to do and what they own is the whole job. Operational excellence makes a huge difference in being able to scale up our delivery to our customers. I wish I had known the signs to reorganize a team, so there are just the right number of people working on a specific aspect of the product without having too many cooks in the kitchen or being resource-strained.

What motivates you to build this company every day?

Our customers. We are incredibly lucky to have had the opportunity to see that the world was going to change how we build in the physical world. With energy and climate change being one of the biggest problems in our generation’s time, we are lucky to have started solving problems for companies who are going after these high-value challenges – some of them didn’t even exist then. There are a lot of sexy problems in this set. For me, I don’t just want to build infrastructure – picks and shovels during a gold rush – but to increase the likelihood of the success of companies taking big swings at the biggest problems for our generation to solve. I think being a part of a generational shift is a very rare opportunity, and we are lucky to be powering many of the companies vying to revolutionize using space for new applications like energy mining, in-space manufacturing, and extending communication as well as companies packaging energy solutions in ways that are only possible with modern manufacturing progress.

Why is LA the right place for you to build your business?

As a software company, it wasn’t immediately clear whether we should build here in LA or in the SF Bay Area. Having seen what has unfolded here in LA, we have no regrets about choosing to stay here. This is where people are taking big bets on applying technology to solve the biggest problems, which are all in the physical world. The talent network here in LA as a function of companies like SpaceX and Anduril is better than anywhere else. Of course, the weather and the intersection of amazing ideas and culture coming from other industries only help build a better product with wider applications.

Behind every successful person there are people who play or have played significant roles in making it happen. Who’s one person who has helped you get to this point? How have they helped?

Shilpi Kumar originally pushed me to seriously consider building a company to solve problems in manufacturing. She initially opened my network to investors in Silicon Valley, which then opened doors to VCs everywhere. Funding and networks were critical for our platform development, and each of those blocks have compounded to build the company we have today. We wouldn’t have any of it if I didn’t get the push to take the first step.

Huge thanks to Karan and the First Resonance team for collaborating with us at Upfront Ventures on this piece and an event in April. We convened the builders at LA’s most promising young hard tech companies for a memorable celebration at the Zimmerman Automobile Driving Museum in El Segundo.

You may have seen cloud seeding in the news recently. After a year’s worth of rain fell on Dubai in one day, speculation grew that the weather modification technology played a role in the heavy flooding.

Interest clearly spiked on the news, but for Augustus, it was just another day to educate people on the potential of cloud seeding. As he said to The Free Press:

“Historically, cloud seeding has been viewed as pseudoscience at best or nonsensical conspiracy theories at worst,” he told me Tuesday. “Dubai’s innovation and results is making the science impossible to ignore.” They are “leading the world in one of this century’s most important technologies, and learning lots along the way,” Doricko explained. “Their vision for a better future, an engineered desert oasis, should inspire and catalyze us to action.”

Engineering a desert into an oasis is one of the most audacious missions in hard tech. The team at Rainmaker seeks to make Earth more habitable.

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Introducing Rainmaker

CEO & Key People: Augustus Doricko
Founded: 2023
El Segundo, CA
Provider of drone-enabled cloud seeding technology to modify the weather and address water scarcity for farms and ecosystems.

With increasing global water consumption, dwindling freshwater resources, and vast regions of arable land being threatened by drought and climate change, solving water scarcity is one of today’s most critical technology problems. Rainmaker plans to solve this problem by improving and commercializing a technology known as cloud seeding.

What is cloud seeding?

Cloud seeding is a method of weather modification that increases the amount of water and snow that clouds precipitate. Simply put, it’s manipulating clouds to make them rain (or snow) more.

The idea is to encourage cloud condensation and ice crystallization by spreading chemical compounds called nucleating agents into clouds. Adjacent water molecules attach to the compounds, crystallize, and precipitate as water, ice, or snow.

Opportunities

Cloud seeding is typically achieved using ground-based generators or flying cropdusters, but there is room for improvement. Ground-based dispersion can be imprecise and low-efficiency, wasting expensive nucleating agents into the air. Planes have better precision and efficiency but can be prohibitively expensive to operate at scale. Finally, cloud forecasting and modeling software don’t offer sufficient insight to enable efficient nucleating agent targeting, regardless of the deployment system.

Potential for positive-sum

Intuition may lead you to believe that cloud seeding won’t solve water scarcity problems. The process would merely cause clouds to precipitate earlier than anticipated. However, some data suggests that cloud seeding enables a positive-sum improvement in the amount of overall precipitation. While only 9% of atmospheric water typically precipitates, cloud seeding may increase that number by creating additional rain that may never have occurred without it.

The Rainmaker solution

Rainmaker aims to improve on the high costs and poor efficiency of existing cloud seeding methods by developing several capabilities:

1. Precision numerical weather modeling. Use real-time weather radar and high-resolution weather prediction software to identify optimal targets for cloud seeding in broader cloud formations. This can reduce the amount of nucleating agent expended per unit of precipitation and drive efficiency.

2. Affordable unmanned drone systems. Design and deploy unmanned weather-resistant drones that enable more precise distribution of nucleating agents and eliminate the high labor costs associated with using piloted aircraft.

3. Superior nucleating agents. Develop new compounds that can improve the efficiency and safety of silver iodide, the most common nucleating agent used today. Silver iodide is generally safe, but its significant use could result in bioaccumulation in the long run, and almost no research has been conducted to improve upon it since it was discovered for this use in the 1940s.

Made in the USA

Foreign countries have been funding cloud seeding research efforts to promote agriculture and favorable weather conditions around the world. China has used it to fight drought in the Yangtze River basin, and as we noted above, Dubai has used it to promote precipitation in the extremely arid Arabian Desert.

Augustus wants to lead American efforts to harness the abundant water on Earth. He is a charismatic and hard-charging leader who spent the last several years obsessing over the different methods humanity can use to tackle water scarcity. He dropped out of his physics major at Berkeley to found a vertical software business for water resource management before realizing that he wanted to pursue a more foundational solution to the problem. Rainmaker was born.

Between collaborations with El Segundo Mayor Drew Boyles and hosting defense tech hackathons at Rainmaker HQ, Augustus has been a lightning rod for the LA Hard Tech community. He and a few of his founder friends have made enormous contributions to El Segundo and its public reemergence as an entrepreneurial hotspot in LA.

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Q&A with CEO, Augustus Doricko

What had to be true so Rainmaker could exist? Why now?

Historically, cloud seeding efforts have been nearly impossible to commercialize because operators couldn't precisely and confidently attribute precipitation to their intervention. Clouds that were seeded may have precipitated without intervention, and even if one accepts that seeding precipitation, quantifying exactly how much precipitated was difficult. While rain gauges spread over a large area are informative, they aren't high enough resolution.

The SNOWIE experiment, conducted in 2017, made a seminal breakthrough in cloud seeding research and a giant leap toward solving the attribution problem. Researchers from across the country hypothesized that, with high enough resolution radar, they would be able to measure an increase in reflectivity in the track of the seeding aircraft that would indicate anthropogenic ice formation. These tracks could then be mapped to precipitation outcomes as the reflectivity signatures were traced to the ground. After conducting their experiment the researchers saw the seeding signatures they anticipated across multiple flights.

Much more research needs to be funded and conducted in order to quantify seeding outcomes. However, this study radically demystified the value prop of cloud seeding for commercial precipitation enhancement.

How will the world change when you succeed?

The first relevant gradation of success at Rainmaker is ending drought-ridden regions like the American West. When we win, squabbles over water rights will be unthinkable. Farms will no longer worry about whether the state will be able to allocate them the water they need to survive and expand. Environmentalists won't have to weigh the survival of endangered ecosystems against the economic benefits of human water use.

The ultimate version of success will make all of Earth habitable. We will have a garden planet where the weather and climate is tuned as precisely as your home's thermostat. Barren deserts will be greened and hurricanes will no longer flood coastal cities. Atmospheric rivers ten times larger than the Nile will convey water through the skies across continents wherever we choose. That is the ultimate end state of Rainmaker.

What motivates you to build this company every day?

The practical motivation for building Rainmaker is to prefer ecological, agricultural, and economic growth over degrowth. I want to see people and nature flourish in the desert, but the status quo is trending towards a future where water is so scarce that both will become impossible. Phoenix, Arizona is banning new housing developments due to insufficient water supplies. Flora and fauna are going extinct in the Colorado River Delta because of its reduced flow. This trend is unacceptable, and thus Rainmaker must produce more water.

The ultimate motivation to build Rainmaker every day is a belief that it is the best means by which I can serve God. In Genesis, man is commanded to steward and take dominion over creation. It's mankind's abdication of our obligation to care for the Earth, to steward and take dominion over it, whenever we allow droughts to occur. My hope and aspiration is for Rainmaker to fulfill this God given responsibility.

Why is LA the right place for you to build your business?

LA is the right place to build Rainmaker because El Segundo is in it. The builders in the Gundo remind me of the biblical story of Gideon. Gideon was a soldier of God and had an army of 30,000 men, they were tasked with saving their nation against all odds. God instructed Gideon to let any men who were afraid leave the army. After the wheat was separated from the chaff, only 300 men remained in the army, but they were the most dedicated, fearless, and honorable of all. Despite being outnumbered hundreds of times over, they won in battle and freed their nation. There are no men in the world I would rather beat the odds and build the next American century alongside than those in the Gundo. It is a pleasure to work with and learn from them. Also there is lots of great engineering talent.

Behind every successful person there are people who play or have played significant roles in making it happen. Who’s one person who has helped you get to this point? How have they helped?

Rainmaker and I are indebted to many dear friends and mentors. One person to whom I am especially grateful is my friend, Cameron Schiller. In the Spring of 2023 I was debating where to headquarter Rainmaker. SF, Santa Monica, Boulder, and Phoenix were all in the running. The Gundo wasn't even on my radar, but Cameron was one of few founders who discovered the city's potential and he clued me in. Not long after, we moved in together. Since then, he and I have spent countless late nights strategizing about our companies. In those chats, it became obvious to me that Cameron is a relentless technologist, seemingly impervious to distraction. Although the frequency with which he reminds people "I just build bro," may come off as abrasive, it radically honed my focus. His dedication to technical literacy and hypothesis testing inspired in me a rigor for which I will always be grateful.

Nothing brings a hardware company to life like seeing the factories in person, and nothing is quite as awe-inspiring as a rocket factory. The scale of the operation transports you into scenes from your favorite science fiction. The minutiae of the manufacturing processes, from the sheet metal forming to the custom tube bending to the precise tension at each pipe connection, ground you in the reality of just how hard rocket science can be.

Needless to say, we were pumped when Co-Founder and President Dan Piemont from ABL Space Systems offered to show us around their factory in El Segundo. Besides a deep appreciation for how much ingenuity has gone into the business since its founding in 2017, we came away with a renewed sense of the defensibility of rocket launch companies. In Dan’s words, “We’re not selling a product or a service. We’re building a program.”

It’s obvious when you see it. One could not walk out of ABL with all their designs and compete right away. Programs are built day by day. Knowledge is created through iteration and testing. You simply cannot shortcut this. Luckily, for the space economy, Dan and his co-founder Harry O’Hanley have been building this way for a long time.

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Introducing ABL Space Systems

CEO & Key People: Harry O’Hanley, Dan Piemont
Founded: 2017
El Segundo, CA
Designer and manufacturer of orbital launch vehicles and deployable ground systems that enable responsive launch capabilities delivered in a shipping container.

ABL Space Systems is building America’s next great launch company, with radical new perspectives on flexible, transportable, and cost-effective rockets and launch infrastructure. Today, there are only four launch sites in America that are actively and regularly capable of servicing orbital launches: Vandenberg, Kodiak, Wallops, and Cape Canaveral. This poses a unique strategic vulnerability to national security and access to space.

Relying on a few fixed launch locations presents a threat. Disruptive events like natural disasters, targeted cyberattacks, or power grid sabotage at any one launch site have the ability to materially handicap our ability to access space.

It’s not just an issue of national security. The centralization of launch capabilities creates logistical bottlenecks. Dependence on specific geographic locations—which each have their own pros and cons—constrains launch scheduling. Delayed timelines and increased costs are habitual.

Environmental and regulatory constraints exacerbate this problem, impacting our ability to rapidly deploy essential space assets. In an era where space systems are vital to national security, economic prosperity, and scientific advancement, these risks underscore the need for a more diversified, resilient, and adaptive launch infrastructure.

Rocket launch in a box

ABL is building a launch platform that delivers on that vision. It is composed of two flagship systems: the GS0 ground system and the RS1 launch vehicle, both of which fit in a set of easily transportable shipping containers.

Sometimes referred to as a “launch site in a box,” GS0 is a rapidly deployable and modular ground system for orbital launch. It transforms open spaces—like a parking lot or an airport—into temporary, fully functional launchpads. GS0 consists of the launch mount and site system, including the fluid and electrical systems that support a launch. It can be rapidly assembled in under a week, can operate off-grid with generator power, and is designed to be operated by non-ABL staff, like US government personnel.

The RS1 is a 1-ton class rocket. It is capable of carrying 1,350 kg to low Earth orbit (LEO) and 300+ kg to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO), enabling it to service key national security use cases. Like the GS0, it’s also ultra-transportable and fits in a set of 3 shipping containers (1 for the booster, 1 for the second stage, and 1 for the fairing).

The ability to rapidly transport and assemble both the rocket and launch site allows ABL to deliver an important strategic capability to the Department of Defense: responsive launch. ABL received a $15M task order from the U.S. Space Force to demonstrate that it can integrate and launch a payload within days. Doing so would enable several important low-latency defense applications.

ABL envisions a world where the US and its allies can quickly and cheaply proliferate the number of launch sites available to them. The combination of GS0 and RS1 allows them to realize their vision of more resilient and responsive launch infrastructure. 

The right team

ABL was founded in 2017 by CEO Harry O’Hanley and President & CFO Dan Piemont. The pair met in undergrad at MIT, where Harry studied mechanical and nuclear engineering, and Dan studied physics and economics. Harry went on to spend nearly seven years at SpaceX building propulsion systems and ultimately managing Falcon 9 integration and testing. Dan spent four years at Morgan Stanley in sales & trading and did stints in venture capital at First Round and Redpoint.

ABL had its first test launch in January 2023. They didn’t make it to orbit (something no launch company has ever done on a first orbital launch, including SpaceX, Rocket Lab, Relativity, Astra, and Firefly), but they collected a ton of data that they have since used to make huge improvements to both the launch mount and the RS1 rocket. They plan to launch again sometime in early 2024 – we’ll be cheering them on.

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Q&A with President, Dan Piemont

What had to be true so ABL could exist? Why now?

Humans have operated in space for sixty years, but in the last decade, three key trends have necessitated a new approach.

1. There is explosive growth in commercial launch demand. Advances in microprocessors, solid-state storage, software-defined radios, and photovoltaics have made satellites performant, flexible, and cheap enough to be used for consumer internet. Companies around the world are working to capture this $100B+ opportunity by deploying tens of thousands of satellites as fast as they can.

2. The U.S. military needs new technology to deter adversaries. As we pivot from counterinsurgency to peer competition, aggressive regimes are actively threatening (and attacking) our satellites and infrastructure. In the next global conflict, the first action in space could be decisive. The best solution is to rapidly deploy a more diverse, distributed, and defensible architecture both in space and on the ground.

3. NASA has re-animated global investment in exploration. Humanity is resolved to develop new space stations, a permanent base on the lunar surface, and ambitious missions to Mars, the asteroid belt, and beyond. This requires a huge increase in the volume, frequency, and type of launches used to test technology, deploy vehicles and habitats, and provide re-supply.

What has been harder than you expected about building ABL?

Developing a launch vehicle with a small team is a real test for everyone involved. These days, basically everything needs to be designed from a blank page to be price competitive, so there are no shortcuts available. You sit down at your computer and do that complex, creative engineering work that rockets are famous for. With a design in hand, you go through a grueling period of analysis, planning, assembly, and testing to meet stringent regulatory requirements and ensure public safety. Anything goes wrong, return to Step 1. Then, during launch campaigns, you have to perform physically as a team in harsh conditions on a countdown with public scrutiny, like in sports or performing arts. No matter who you are, you’re forced to grow in one direction or another. I respect anyone who has made a bona fide contribution as a responsible person in a launch program.

What motivates you to build this company every day?

Day-to-day: I want everyone at ABL to flourish as individuals.

Month-to-month: I want our customers to get to space quickly, easily, and reliably.

Year-to-year: I want there to be space launches multiple times every day from many sites all around the world on a wide variety of rockets performing a huge range of missions to guarantee security, prosperity, discovery, and exploration for all mankind (!!)

Why is LA the right place for you to build your business?

LA has the talent, tools, and energy needed.

Behind every successful person, there are people who play or have played significant roles in making it happen. Who’s one person who has helped you get to this point? How have they helped?

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to recognize the families and friends of everyone at ABL, who provide support, perspective, community, and joy and have made huge contributions to ABL in so many ways.

Thanks to Dan for touring us around the factory. We can’t wait to see your next launch. If you’re interested in joining ABL, check out their open jobs here!

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Introducing Senra Systems

CEO & Key People: Jordan Black, Ben Shanahan
Founded: 2023
Torrance, CA
Manufacturer of wire harnesses, enabling convenient, transparent, and rapid delivery.

Senra Systems is building the world’s first software-defined wire harness factory. Combining their experiences making custom wire harnesses and developing manufacturing software for SpaceX, founders Jordan Black and Ben Shanahan are working with some of the world's most innovative hardware companies. They bring the rapid iteration and scale orientation that have become legendary elements of SpaceX’s culture to a decaying, yet critical part of the hard tech value chain.

What is a wire harness?

Wire harnesses, aka cable harnesses or wiring assemblies, are highly customized bundles of electrical cables bound together with connectors, terminals, and other components. They are designed to form single, organized, and manageable units that connect the various electrical components, sensors, and devices within a hardware system.

Buried behind polished metal and plastic surfaces, wire harnesses are generally invisible to us as we go about our daily lives. But once you know they exist, you realize that they’re everywhere. Every car, truck, boat, aircraft, microwave oven, espresso machine, television, industrial robot, and rocket engine functions because these complex, custom cables safely and reliably conduct electricity throughout their systems. No wonder wire harnesses make up a $105 billion global market!

Of course, not all wire harnesses are created equal. Your toaster oven and frame TV don’t experience the same environmental conditions as your car. The stakes are also lower if the harnesses fail. But in some cases, wire harnesses are the key failure point that can cause tens or even hundreds of millions in damages.

Faulty aerospace wire harnesses have been the cause of several high-profile mission failures. The Apollo 13 accident was infamously triggered by an oxygen tank igniting a damaged wire insulation. In 2022, a startup’s rocket launch failed to deliver its payload to orbit when a wiring error in the rocket’s separation mechanism prevented stage separation.

Despite their importance, the supply base for this technology is plagued with problems. The supply chain is made up of hundreds of mom-and-pop shops that use little to no technology in the design and manufacturing process. Designs are usually hand-drawn, creating lengthy feedback loops for customers to receive quotes from suppliers. Manufacturing is almost entirely manual as harnesses are assembled by hand on paper formboards.

Despite billions spent on harnesses across the aerospace and defense industrial base, a typical aerospace customer can wait 6+ months to receive their order. And the problem is only getting worse—American manufacturing is constrained by skilled labor shortages, and wire harnessing is no exception.

This is where Senra comes in. By building a vertically integrated, software-powered factory they can shrink lead times on premium harnesses from 6 months to 2 weeks (the same time a traditional supplier might take to provide a quote). Building their production line with speed and automation in mind, they’ve replaced industry-standard hand tools with a platform of advanced machines.

The secret sauce is their foundational design software. Their platform allows them to simplify layout, accelerate collaboration with customers, and enable price and lead time transparency. The tool is also linked to procurement and machine configuration. Parts are automatically ordered, production line machines are calibrated, and work instructions are auto-generated for technicians.

It's safe to say that Senra is completely reimagining the wire harness manufacturing process and creating a new standard for this critical piece of the hardware value chain. With the team they’ve assembled and the culture they’re building, it’s easy to see how they’ll play a critical role in the hard tech ecosystem that is evolving in LA and beyond.

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Q&A with CEO, Jordan Black

What had to be true so Senra could exist? Why now?

The world is moving towards mass-electrification, while skilled labor for electromechanical manufacturing is diminishing. In order to meet growing wire harness demand, modernization is needed now more than ever as the manufacturing process has not significantly changed since the Cold War.

How will the world change when you succeed?

The future of American manufacturing is defined by configuration, not automation. Moreover, designing hardware properly from an early stage will be less overlooked.

What has been harder than you expected about building Senra?

The small things such as finding factory space and choosing a logo.

What do you know now that you wish you knew when you first started Senra?

I wish I spent more time outlining the vision of the company early on instead of jumping right into manufacturing harnesses the third week we started.

What motivates you to build this company every day?

The people. Both our customers, who are excited to work with us and fix this problem, and our growing team.

Why is LA the right place for you to build your business?

We are enabling a customer-driven supply chain, so people can design and manufacture their parts when they want and how they want. This requires us being in LA to be close to some of our most important customers.

Behind every successful person, there are people who play or have played significant roles in making it happen. Who’s one person who has helped you get to this point? How have they helped?

Jai Malik (GP at Countdown Capital) was our first investor and the person who believed in us the most. He spent many late nights listening to my crazed obsession about solving this problem to being the cheerleader we truly needed. In addition, our close friends and family have always been very supportive in our efforts, and we could not have built this company without them.

Thanks to Jordan for touring us around the factory back in August. The business has grown a lot since then and they have the capital to expand even more. Check out their open jobs here!

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Introducing K2 Space

CEO & Key People: Karan Kunjur, Neel Kunjur
Founded: 2022
Torrance, CA
Manufacturer of large, heavy satellite buses to leverage cheaper heavy-lift launch capabilities.

The team at K2 Space believes we’re heading into a future where mass is no longer the critical constraint for satellites. They would know—co-founder and CTO Neel Kunjur was a mission director at SpaceX and built Dragon avionics systems. But before we look ahead, let’s do a quick look back.

SpaceX pioneered rocket reusability with Falcon 9 over the last decade. Because of them, commercial launch costs fell, and launch frequency increased. Space operators started designing large constellations of small satellites instead of spending millions of dollars concentrating capabilities into a few large, exquisite vehicles. Satellites started proliferating in low Earth orbit (LEO) for communications and Earth observation, and the number of vehicles in space has grown exponentially.

K2 bets this paradigm shift is a transitional state for the industry. With Falcon 9 launch rates increasing and fully reusable super-heavy launch vehicles like Starship on the horizon, constraining spacecraft for mass may not be as important anymore. In this mass-abundant future, they believe satellite capabilities will re-emerge as the most critical factor in satellite demand.

K2 is completely reimagining the satellite bus for this new world, redesigning it to be massive enough to support high-power, high-aperture, and high-payload use cases using cost-efficient materials and components. For example, traditional buses use expensive, radiation-hardened space-grade electronics, and K2 uses cheap, radiation-tolerant commercial electronics with heavy aluminum shielding.

Their first product is the K2 Mega Class bus. It has a payload capacity of 1 metric ton and 20kW array power. Traditional satellites of this scale could cost up to $200M, but the K2 Mega Class will cost operators $15M. The bus is designed to be compact and stackable, so a Falcon 9 could carry 10 Mega Class satellites to orbit at once, and Starship would be able to take 40. Their bus and the SpaceX launch platform open a new universe of opportunities for space operators.

The Kunjur brothers are thinking BIG. After all, K2 is named after the concept of a Type II civilization on the Kardashev scale, where humanity achieves the ability to directly consume a star’s energy. (Their Dyson Sphere-inspired logo says it all.)

While Kardashev Type II may be far away, this team has the experience and vision to build the next great aerospace manufacturing company. CEO Karan helped build an AI company that sold in 2021 after a career at BCG, leading turnarounds, acquisitions, and new ventures. His brother and CTO, Neel, spent 5.5 years at SpaceX building Dragon avionics systems and serving as Mission Director for Dragon missions. K2 has raised $16M from First Round, Republic Capital, Also Capital, Countdown Capital, and Alpine Space Ventures to execute their vision of delivering high-power, low-cost spacecraft to unlock new opportunities in the space economy.

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Q&A with CEO, Karan Kunjur

What had to be true so K2 could exist? Why now?

Since the first successful orbital launch in 1957, we have operated in an era of mass constraint - what we could do in space was limited by how much we could launch into space. With the rise of launch vehicles like Falcon 9, Starship, Terran-R, and others, we are about to move from an era of mass constraint to an era of mass abundance. In this new era of mass abundance, we have an opportunity to do a hard reset on how we build satellites. K2 Space is the first company to reset the satellite for this new mass-abundant future.

How will the world change when you succeed?

Almost every single application in space relies on a combination of power, mass, or aperture. The historic mass constraint meant we had to trade off one of those capabilities with cost. With the K2 bus, we found a way to deploy significant power, mass, and aperture at a fraction of the cost of legacy satellites. Our constellations will be used to beam down terabits per second of data, monitor rising sea levels globally, and eventually provide the backbone for all future space development.

What motivates you to build this company every day?

A deep, resounding belief that this platform needs to exist. Considering how much humanity has been able to achieve when we've been fighting against the mass constraint, we are excited to see what's possible when that constraint no longer exists. Our logo is a Dyson Sphere for a reason.

Why is LA the right place for you to build your business?

The community in LA is incredible. From the legacy Aerospace players to SpaceX to the booming startup community - it does feel like a modern-day Renaissance is happening (we're just missing a Pope and a few Medicis). The optimism is contagious, the willingness to help each other is high, and the speed at which people are executing their vision is inspiring.

Behind every successful person, there are people who play or have played significant roles in making it happen. Who’s one person who has helped you get to this point? How have they helped?

As much fun as it is to take "Founder Photos" with your brother, our company wouldn't exist without the people on the team who made the jump to join K2, even when it was just a few PowerPoint slides, hopes, and dreams. Whether it's Matt Croce—a 27-yr Special Ops veteran—who was our employee Number 1, Drew Miller—an ex-SpaceX engineering leader—who was our first engineering hire, or the 21 other people who have jumped on over the past nine months, the impact this company makes will be directly tied to the team we're bringing together. We continue to be in awe at every new engineer and operator who comes to help build K2.

Thanks to Karan and Neel for spending time with us over the last couple of years. We’re excited about what you’re building and can’t wait to see the factory.

Today, we’re going a level deeper. The companies we’ve been fortunate enough to meet and work with in LA are more than just a one-liner. They have impactful and strategic visions and the teams are made up of talented and ambitious people. LA is lucky to have them, and we hope to show you why by featuring them here.

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Introducing Apex Space

CEO & Key People: Ian Cinnamon, Max Benassi
Founded: 2022
Culver City, CA
Designer and manufacturer of standard, configurable satellite buses with transparent pricing

Apex is on a mission to change how space companies acquire satellite buses—the systems that enable satellites to perform their tasks in orbit. Unlike the previous model, where satellite companies design and build entire vehicles in-house or subcontract for bespoke designs, Apex sells complete off-the-shelf systems, including the structural frame, power, propulsion, and communications platforms.

Traditionally, bus manufacturing was a costly design and engineering process as companies built bespoke vehicles for orbit. Costs added up, and redundancies and contingencies were built in to derisk mission failure, further driving up costs. The results were lengthy build processes, often extending between 18 to 36 months.

Apex’s novel approach to satellite bus manufacturing could be revolutionary. By offering configurable, standard designs, Apex simplifies bus design and manufacturing, reducing production time and cost. Their goal is to decrease lead times to eight weeks, and today, their base configuration comes in at $3.25M, versus $5-10M for similar specs with a traditional provider.

This addresses critical bottlenecks in the rapidly growing space economy. With SpaceX offering regular, dependable launches, the customary delays and high costs associated with satellite production are the next major hurdles for both defense and commercial space operators. Apex's model of standardized, efficient, and reliable production helps overcome these challenges, offering a substantial cost and speed advantage for a variety of space-related applications.

With three different payload classes—Aries (100kg), Nova (230kg), and Comet (500kg)—that offer flexibility and readiness for various space missions, Apex is on track to meet the diverse and expanding demands of the new space economy.

They have the team and the money to do it. CEO and co-founder Ian Cinnamon sold his previous physical security company to Palantir, and CTO and co-founder Max Benassi is a former engineering director who scaled engines and spacecraft at SpaceX and Astra. With over $50M in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Shield Capital, XYZ, 8VC, and Toyota Ventures, and a new 46,000 sq. ft. production facility, Apex may become a key enabler in making space exploration and utilization more accessible.

Q&A with CEO, Ian Cinnamon

What had to be true so Apex could exist? Why now?

Satellite buses (the core set of components on a spacecraft) are not new—spacecraft have been around for decades. And since the beginning of the industry, expensive and infrequent launches resulted in the need for highly customized, bespoke satellite buses that catered to exquisite payloads.

However, in the last few years, the bottleneck in the industry has shifted from the launch sector to the spacecraft sector—specifically, satellite buses are often the largest pain point and cause of delay. Bespoke buses are great, but they can be expensive and slow to develop.

Today’s new reality means it is no longer optimal to build a perfect satellite bus for each payload— the cost of the delay outweighs the cost of additional mass or other optimizations. Therefore, we are at a unique time in history where the market is ready for rapidly-available, commercial off-the-shelf satellite buses.

How will the world change when you succeed?

Apex endeavors to be the largest supplier of spacecraft platforms in the galaxy—not just our world here on Earth. We believe in a future where access to space is ubiquitous, with new businesses and applications we can only dream of now. Imagine interplanetary life, asteroid mining, and so much more. The core set of fundamentals that need to come true for all of that is the platform layer, which Apex supplies.

What has been harder than you expected about building Apex?

Everything! I’m an optimistic person (I’d argue you need to be if you’re a founder). Every day brings on unexpected twists and turns, but the unrelenting desire to accomplish our mission perseveres above all else.

Why is LA the right place for you to build your business?

Los Angeles is the aerospace capital of the world. America’s defense industrial base laid a foundation here, which has given rise to amazing companies like SpaceX, Anduril, Relativity, Rocket Lab, and more. Personally, I grew up here in Los Angeles. I lived in the Bay Area for nearly a decade, but I always dreamed of moving back to my hometown — I’m overjoyed I’m able to do that thanks to Apex.

Behind every successful person, there are people who play or have played significant roles in making it happen. Who’s one person who has helped you get to this point? How have they helped?

Apex wouldn’t exist without my incredible cofounder and CTO, Max. Max spent his career scaling up the manufacturing of aerospace parts, and he has built the team at Apex to operate at unheard of speeds in the industry. He’s been the driving force that allows us to be the fastest ever company to go from clean sheet design to functional spacecraft in our size class— something that truly sets us apart!

Huge thanks to Ian and the Apex team for hosting us at your office/factory last year. Next week, look out for another company spotlight in aerospace!

People new to LA might visit these ambitious companies and marvel at the hard tech startup ecosystem blossoming here. More informed observers realize this is the evolution of an industry that has been building in Los Angeles for a hundred years. LA has been a leading technology center for critical infrastructure like aerospace and defense since the founding of Lockheed in 1926 and Hughes, the JPL, and Northrop Corporation shortly thereafter.

The city boasts the greatest concentration of hard tech talent in the country. These scientists, researchers, and engineers have been making planes fly, satellites communicate, and submarines lurk for decades. Nick witnessed this firsthand because his mom and other family members led systems design and built flight control systems for programs like the V-280 Valor and the B-2 Bomber.

Until recently, most of this work happened inside large government prime contractors. However, after decades of consolidation in the aerospace and defense industry, the US Department of Defense acknowledges that “promoting competition to the maximum extent possible is a top priority for the Department.”1 That has created the friendliest environment for technology startups in a generation, and there is no place where startups are taking better advantage of that than Los Angeles.

Since SpaceX was founded here in 2002, there has been an explosion of hard tech startups created throughout southern California. Unsurprisingly, many of the founders hail from SpaceX. The company ignited the entrepreneurial spirit in LA’s hard tech ecosystem. Now, people who previously progressed science and engineering inside primes at incumbent speed are pursuing hypergrowth startups.

But it doesn’t stop there. Countless founders are moving to LA to build ambitious companies in satellite manufacturing, boating, aviation, and more. The world of atoms is cool again. There has never been a better time to start hard tech companies, and because of the talent already here, many of the most promising ones are built in LA.

Here are the 50 hard tech companies you should know about in southern California (and many honorable mentions at the end). Let us know who we’ve missed!

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LA Hard Tech 50

These are the companies that come up again and again when we speak to founders and co-investors. This list is just the tip of the iceberg: a sampling of companies that had stand-out years in 2023. We’ve compiled a searchable and sortable list of these companies for you here.

Public and Late-Growth (Series D+)

SpaceX

CEO & Key People: Elon Musk, Gwynne Shotwell
Stage: Late-growth
Founded: 2002
Hawthorne, CA
Designer and manufacturer of reusable orbital launch systems and satellite constellations for government and commercial applications.

Anduril

CEO & Key People: Brian Schimpf, Palmer Luckey, Trae Stephens, Matt Grimm
Stage: Series E
Founded: 2017
Costa Mesa, CA
Builder of interconnected, software-enabled sensors and autonomous systems that deliver new capabilities to the battlefield for the DOD and allies.

Rocket Lab

CEO & Key People: Peter Beck
Stage: Public
Founded: 2006
Long Beach, CA
Designer and manufacturer of small and medium-lift orbital launch vehicles, satellite buses, and satellite subsystems.

Relativity

CEO & Key People: Tim Ellis
Stage: Series E
Founded: 2015
Long Beach, CA
Designer and manufacturer of reusable 3D-printed heavy-lift orbital launch vehicles.

Shield AI

CEO & Key People: Ryan Tseng, Brandon Tseng
Stage: Series F
Founded: 2015
San Diego, CA
Developer of autonomous AI pilot software for manned and unmanned aerial systems and manufacturer of UAVs.

Rivian

CEO & Key People: RJ Scaringe
Stage: Public
Founded: 2009
Irvine, CA
Designer and manufacturer of electric consumer adventure vehicles and fleet delivery vehicles.

Apeel

CEO & Key People: James Rogers
Stage: Series E
Founded: 2012
Goleta, CA
Manufacturer of a plant-derived coating for fresh produce that extends shelf-life by reducing water loss and oxidation.

Divergent

CEO & Key People: Kevin Czinger, Lukas Czinger
Stage: Series D
Founded: 2013
Torrance, CA
Developer of end-to-end production systems, including software and hardware for industrial digital manufacturing in automotive, aerospace, and defense.

Zeitview

CEO & Key People: Dan Burton
Stage: Series D
Founded: 2014
Santa Monica, CA
Developer of advanced inspection software capturing visual data to accelerate the transition to renewable energy and protect critical infrastructure.

Early-Growth (Series B/C)

Radiant

CEO & Key People: Doug Bernauer, Bob Urberger
Stage: Series B
Founded: 2019
El Segundo, CA
Designer and manufacturer of small modular nuclear fission reactors for austere environments and off-grid backup use cases.

ABL Space Systems

CEO & Key People: Harry O’Hanley, Dan Piemont
Stage: Series B
Founded: 2017
El Segundo, CA
Designer and manufacturer of an orbital launch vehicle and deployable ground system that enables responsive launch capabilities delivered in a shipping container.

Epirus

CEO & Key People: Ken Bedingfield, Grant Verstandig, Nathan Mintz, Joe Lonsdale
Stage: Series C
Founded: 2018
Torrance, CA
Developer of directed energy systems for counter-electronics and counter-UAS using high-power microwaves.

SpinLaunch

CEO & Key People: Jonathan Yaney
Stage: Series B
Founded: 2014
Long Beach, CA
Provider of kinetic orbital launch capabilities using rotational mass acceleration to move small payloads at hypersonic speeds.

Umbra

CEO & Key People: David Langan, Gabe Dominocielo
Stage: Series B
Founded: 2015
Santa Barbara, CA
Designer, manufacturer, and operator of earth observation satellites using synthetic aperture radar to deliver ultra-high resolution imagery from orbit.

Skyryse

CEO & Key People: Mark Groden
Stage: Series B
Founded: 2016
El Segundo, CA
Developer of flight hardware and a software operating system to facilitate safe, autonomous, and accessible aviation.

Machina Labs

CEO & Key People: Ed Mehr
Stage: Series B
Founded: 2019
Chatsworth, CA
Provider of robotic manufacturing platforms that can scan, shape, and trim sheet metal into large and complex geometries.

inVia Robotics

CEO & Key People: Lior Elazary
Stage: Series C
Founded: 2015
Westlake Village, CA
Provider of next-generation warehouse automation robotics and orchestration software.

Spartan

CEO & Key People: Matt Markel, Nathan Mintz
Stage: Series B
Founded: 2019
Los Alamitos, CA
Developer of software and sensing hardware to improve safety and performance for mobility sensing radar.

Universal Hydrogen

CEO & Key People: Paul Eremenko, Mark Cousin
Stage: Series B
Founded: 2020
Hawthorne, CA
Designer and developer of hydrogen fuel cell electric powertrain conversion kits and natively designed aircraft with a mission to decarbonize aviation.

Arc Boats

CEO & Key People: Mitch Lee, Ryan Cook
Stage: Series B
Founded: 2021
Los Angeles, CA
Designer and manufacturer of high-performance and sustainable electric watercraft.

Vast

CEO & Key People: Max Haot, Jed McCaleb
Stage: Privately funded
Founded: 2021
Long Beach, CA
Builder of the world’s first commercial space station for space agencies, research, manufacturing, and private individuals.

Early-Stage (Series A)

Varda

CEO & Key People: Will Bruey, Delian Asparouhov
Stage: Series A
Founded: 2020
El Segundo, CA
Developer of a platform for manufacturing pharmaceuticals in space and manufacturer of re-entry vehicles to return to Earth.

Freeform

CEO & Key People: Erik Palitsch, TJ Ronacher
Stage: Series A
Founded: 2018
Hawthorne, CA
Builder of autonomous 3D printing factories to deliver complex metal parts at high volume using software-defined powder bed fusion printers.

Hadrian

CEO & Key People: Chris Power
Stage: Series A
Founded: 2020
Torrance, CA
Builder of software-defined automated factories to produce high-precision machined parts for aerospace and defense.

First Resonance

CEO & Key People: Karan Talati
Stage: Series A
Founded: 2020
Los Angeles, CA
Developer of next-generation manufacturing systems software for rapid, iterative, and data-driven hardware manufacturing.

Parallel Systems

CEO & Key People: Matt Soule, John Howard, Ben Stabler
Stage: Series A
Founded: 2020
El Segundo, CA
Builder of autonomous and decarbonized freight system with zero-emissions rail vehicles.

Epsilon3

CEO & Key People: Laura Crabtree, Max Mednik
Stage: Series A
Founded: 2020
Santa Monica, CA
Developer of a software suite for complex engineering, testing, and operations.

Harbinger

CEO & Key People: John Harris, Phillip Weicker, Will Eberts
Stage: Series A
Founded: 2021
Gardena, CA
Builder of a vertically integrated electric vehicle platform to produce commercial and specialty vehicles.

Impulse Space

CEO & Key People: Tom Mueller
Stage: Series A
Founded: 2021
El Segundo, CA
Designer and manufacturer of orbital transfer vehicles for maneuvering orbits and last-mile payload delivery.

Chaos Industries

CEO & Key People: Gavin Hood, John Tenet, Bo Marr
Stage: Series A
Founded: 2022
Los Angeles, CA
Builder of novel technology for defense and critical industries with rapid prototyping.

Apex Space

CEO & Key People: Ian Cinnamon, Max Benassi
Stage: Series A
Founded: 2022
Culver City, CA
Designer and manufacturer of standard and configurable satellite buses with transparent pricing.

Early-Stage (Pre-seed and Seed)

K2 Space

CEO & Key People: Karan Kunjur, Neel Kunjur
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2022
Torrance, CA
Manufacturer of large, heavy satellite buses to leverage cheaper and more available heavy-lift launch capabilities.

Cambium

CEO & Key People: Simon Waddington, Stephen Herrera
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2019
El Segundo, CA
Developer of materials and platforms, including UAVs, optical systems, and next-generation aerospace composites, for operations in extreme environments.

RangeView

CEO & Key People: Cameron Schiller, Aeden Gasser-Brennan
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2020
El Segundo, CA
Builder of a cyberfoundry that uses robotics and data processing to improve investment casting of metal parts.

Galvanick

CEO & Key People: Joshua Steinman, Brandon Park, Feliks Pleszczynski
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2021
Los Angeles, CA
Developer of an extended detection and response platform for securing industrial operations from cyberattacks.

AstroForge

CEO & Key People: Matt Gialich, Jose Acain
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2021
Huntington Beach, CA
Developer of near-Earth asteroid mining capabilities to deliver resources from space to Earth.

Inversion

CEO & Key People: Justin Fiaschetti, Austin Briggs
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2021
Torrance, CA
Provider of rapid, responsive cargo delivery services to Earth from space using orbital re-entry vehicles.

Rainmaker

CEO & Key People: Augustus Doricko
Stage: Pre-seed
Founded: 2023
El Segundo, CA
Provider of weather modification technology using drone-enabled cloud seeding to address water scarcity.

AnySignal

CEO & Key People: John Malsbury, Jefferey Osborne, Ricardo Medina
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2022
El Segundo, CA
Provider of full-stack radiofrequency connectivity solutions for space and defense.

Firestorm

CEO & Key People: Dan Magy, Chad McCoy
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2022
San Diego, CA
Developer of mission-adaptable aerial vehicles that can be customized and manufactured at the edge.

Castelion

CEO & Key People: Bryon Harris, Sean Pitt, Andrew Kreitz
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2022
El Segundo, CA
Designer and manufacturer of hypersonic missiles and subsystems with rapid design iteration.

Arbor

CEO & Key People: Brad Hartwig
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2022
El Segundo, CA
Designer of carbon-negative power plants that convert waste into fresh water and clean energy, and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

OurSky

CEO & Key People: Dan Roelker, Alex Hawkinson
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2022
Los Angeles, CA
Developer of a data infrastructure platform for space applications leveraging real-time observational data and analysis of objects in space.

Senra Systems

CEO & Key People: Jordan Black, Ben Shanahan
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2023
Torrance, CA
Manufacturer of wire harnesses, enabling convenient, transparent, and rapid delivery.

Hgen

CEO & Key People: Molly Yang, Colin Ho
Stage: Pre-seed
Founded: 2021
Hawthorne, CA
Producer of low-cost clean hydrogen to decarbonize heavy industry using alkaline electrolysis technology.

Ethos Space

CEO & Key People: Ross Centers, Brogan BamBrogan, Jeff Overbeek
Stage: Pre-seed
Founded: 2022
Mar Vista, CA
Developer of lunar in-situ resource utilization technology with the ultimate goal of building a planetary sunshade to control climate change.

Open X

CEO & Key People: Cody James
Stage: Pre-seed
Founded: 2019
Long Beach, CA
Developer of career-defining technical skills platform for aerospace, manufacturing, and engineering.

Picogrid

CEO & Key People: Zane Mountcastle, Martin Slosarik
Stage: Pre-seed
Founded: 2020
El Segundo, CA
Developer of a unified data integration platform that connects sensors, cameras, and autonomous systems, backed by a suite of native hardware solutions.

Stell

CEO & Key People: Malory McLemore, Anne Wen
Stage: Pre-seed
Founded: 2022
Marina Del Rey, CA
Developer of software to digitize requirements management and accelerate complex engineering for aerospace and defense.

Sift

CEO & Key People: Karthik Gollapudi, Austin Spiegel
Stage: Seed
Founded: 2022
El Segundo, CA
Developer of telemetry operations software to enhance real-time anomaly detection and accelerate new tool and process integrations.

Honorable Mentions

Here are some more honorable mentions who inspired us and who we believe are worth getting to know:

Ampaire, Antares, Argo Space, Astrolab, Auriga, Cover, Datum, Duro Labs, Elementary, Exosonic, Flyby Robotics, Gambit, KittyCAD, Moonware, Morpheus, Neros, Odys Aviation, Outpost Space, Phase Four, Prewitt Ridge, Proteus, Quilter, Rollup, Salient Motion, Slingshot, Stellar Pizza, Syntiant, Terraform Industries, Turion Space, Valar Atomics, Vuecason…

…and many stealth companies that have yet to announce any information publicly.

An early-stage founder gave me feedback recently that this piece about customer segmentation helped her think about raising her prices.

She knows certain customers would pay more (they’ve told her they would!) and that she should capture that value. Still, she has hesitations:

• “But our press release says…”

• “But people will be pissed!”

• “But what if we have to lower them?”

• “But our competitors aren't charging as much as we do...”

• “How do we prioritize?”

I get it. It’s uncomfortable to raise prices. Still, in my experience, startups almost always can (and should) increase their prices.

Either way, you’re not charging enough

A common trope in pricing is ‘if your prospect says yes to the first price you ask for, you’re not charging enough.’

If you’ve ever negotiated and put out the first ask, you know what I’m talking about. There’s nothing more useful (and painful) than the visceral, immediate feedback you get when someone says yes too quickly. There’s only one appropriate response.

Leaving money on the table is painful, but hearing yes is obviously the better outcome. Hear enough fast yeses and you will increase your prices.

Startups don’t often get this feedback. It’s rare for people to say a quick yes to a startup. In my experience, startups face the opposite problem: prospects are saying no because they’re not being charged enough.

We see this all the time in enterprise sales. Desperate to close their first customers, startups discount to oblivion or offer free or almost free pilot programs. Engaged prospects pass without negotiating, and companies are left scratching their heads.

“It’s basically free! What’s going on?”

In many cases, the buyer is questioning the quality of the product or service because it’s priced too low. They’re thinking:

• They can’t really offer all this value at this low price

• They haven’t invested the resources to successfully deliver

• The product won’t be worth the time-consuming and costly onboarding process

• Our team will take on too much of the work

• There won’t be enough customer support

Wait a minute. If customers say yes without a fight, we’re not charging enough. If they say no without a fight, we’re also not charging enough?

That’s right. For early-stage startups, the default assumption should be that either way, you’re not charging enough.

Dare to be right about your value

My friend Dylan recently told me about a business he’s an investor in. The team purchased a real estate software company that had a small but loyal customer base and almost no growth. The long-term plan is to improve the sales motion and invest in product expansion, but the first thing they did was double the price. 

Previously, property owners were paying $99/mo. for the software. Sales were hard. Today, they’re charging owners $0.65/door/mo., which ends up being at least a 2x greater price. Yes, some of this comes from better aligning their pricing model to their value creation. They also jump-started growth by simply charging more.

The concept of charging more applies to products you have and also to products you don’t. Remember when Tesla charged $1,000 to reserve a spot in line for the Model 3? Reports said they had at least 325,000 deposits for those cars. Tesla made $325 million by monetizing a waiting list.

Startups can do the same.

In April, one of my portfolio companies had a team-wide conversation about their annual budget. This was a pre-launch company with ambitious goals of hitting 1,100+ paying customers by year-end and team members were asked about what concerns them the most about the plan.

When someone mentioned that hitting their first-month goal of 10 paying customers worried them the most, a founder jumped in immediately. She said that given her conversations with potential early customers, she’d be shocked if they didn’t hit it.

So we posed a question: Why wait until launch to start charging these early adopters? Could we test their commitment and start charging them right now?

By Monday the following week, the ability to take payment was in place and they started charging people to be on the waitlist. They hit their August goal in June, and they haven’t looked back.

Increase prices, increase profits

The Harvard Business Review estimated (in a fairly dated analysis) that relative to other levers, increasing price has by far the greatest impact on operating profit.

It makes sense: if you increase prices and sales don’t drop, every additional dollar flows straight through to gross margin. Of course, sales can drop. That breakeven analysis isn’t in scope for this post, but perhaps I’ll run through it for a future post.

Anyone who has worked in sales appreciates that you don’t truly know a prospect’s purchase intent until you ask for the sale. Similarly, you don’t truly know if people are willing to pay more for your product unless you try to charge them more.

Given the impact prices can have on profits, isn’t it worth it to find out?

My reductive attitude about increasing prices is missing nuance and I’m sure raising prices like an auctioneer can lead to harmful unintended consequences.

What are those consequences?
How have companies gone too far?

Whether you have thoughts on this or anything else pricing related, I’d love to hear from you!

Thanks to Kerry, Nicole, Nina, Dylan, David, and Katie for your help on this.

Sometimes it feels like no matter what I’m talking about the conversation steers into pricing. I can’t help myself. I get so fired up about pricing.

Most founders agree it’s important, yet we usually get it wrong.

I’m always learning and refining my thinking, but I come back to some frameworks again and again. The first?

Don’t price where the supply and demand curves intersect. Instead, set as many prices as you can ALONG the demand curve.

Economics 101

In microeconomics, we learn that the market-clearing price and quantity of a good or service should be set where your supply and demand curves intersect. In other words, produce where the number of units you could sell (Q) at a specific price (P) equals the number of units you are willing to make at that price.

From what I can tell, this is the default starting point for most companies beginning their pricing journeys. New products in the real world don’t have clear supply and demand curves, so we ask questions like:

• Where am I priced relative to my competition?

• How much would customers be willing to pay?

• Is there enough value at this price?

These questions help us understand demand. (The supply curve is often ignored in the early days of venture-backed startups.) This is a good starting place. It's straightforward. Unfortunately, it leaves a lot of value on the table.

The demand curve represents the willingness to pay for all your potential customers1. There is a better approach than pricing your product where supply meets demand. Instead, companies should try to set multiple prices along the entire demand curve and capture customers at every price they’re willing to pay for a product.

Economics 101 Learn From the Best

How is this done in practice? Let’s look at pricing for the iPhone in July 2023.

You can get the iPhone 14 for $799. Wonderful. You can also get the iPhone 14 for $899 or $1,099. Why would anyone pay $1,099 for a phone that you could get for $799?

Because they can, of course!

Sure, you get substantially more storage at these higher prices. But most iPhone users won’t hit capacity. At 512GB, you’re not getting storage as much as you are getting the peace of mind that you won’t run out. How much is that peace of mind worth?

It costs $300. Whether it’s worth it is up to you (and your willingness to pay). That’s why Apple sells three tiers of iPhone 14s that are essentially the same device. Rather than offering one with adequate storage, they capture more value by offering three. The 512GB version costs 37.5% more than the base model, but Apple knows some customers are willing to pay for it.

That’s not all. Introduce the iPhone 14 Plus, Pro, and Pro Max and Apple sells 14 models of the iPhone 14 at 9 different prices!

You might be thinking these are different products. The Plus and the Pro Max have bigger screens and the Pros have better hardware. That’s true, but you can pay anywhere from $799 – $1,499 for the small-screen iPhone 14 or $899 – $1,599 for the big-screen one. Apple has essentially made either version available at every price in their range.

Add in last year’s iPhone 13, the “Special Edition” iPhone SE (Apple literally saying, “I give you special price”), and the two-year-old iPhone 12, and you can buy an iPhone from Apple for anywhere from $429 – $1,599. If Apple had followed Econ 101, they might have priced at $799 and offered a middle-of-the-road 256GB of storage. Instead, they sell iPhones at 17 different prices.

Look familiar?

Capture Value by Pricing Along the Demand Curve

In economics, the area above the price you set and below the demand curve is called consumer surplus. It is the excess value you are delivering to the customers who are willing to pay a higher price for your product. It is the value you are not capturing.

Apple is not interested in giving consumer surplus to customers willing to pay a higher price. Pricing the iPhone along the demand curve delivers that value to shareholders.

This customer segmentation drives gross margin for them as well. The larger NAND flash memory chips don’t cost them as much as the price increases for consumers, so a lot of that price increase flows straight through to gross margin.

This is the power of pricing along the demand curve.

I love this concept, and I could talk about pricing all day. Why pricing is a product attribute. Why it’s a brand attribute. How startups wait too long to charge at all and usually charge too little. More on that to come.

In the meantime, I’d love to know your strongly held beliefs about pricing. Let me know if there’s something you’d like to share or a question we can explore together.

Thank you to Kerry, Nina, and Nicole for your help with this post.

To our shareholders: 

Amazon.com passed many milestones in 1997: by year-end, we had served more than 1.5 million customers, yielding 838% revenue growth to $147.8 million, and extended our market leadership despite aggressive competitive entry. 

But this is Day 1 for the Internet and, if we execute well, for Amazon.com.

25 years later, Amazon credits much of its success to this Day 1 mentality. I love this idea for building a business, but I love it even more for building relationships. 

My wife and I met in our early twenties in Manhattan. We had both moved from California, and we quickly became enamored with the city and each other. Sweaty dance parties at Webster Hall and PS1. Treks to Flushing for Peking duck buns and to Harlem for jazz at Bill’s Place. 2 am slices and 2 pm bagels. That time in our lives was magical and wild and indulgent and more than we could ever ask for. 

It was also hard. We were on the express train to spend the rest of our lives together, and navigating that decision as young kids. How could we know this early in our lives that we wanted to spend forever together?

Then one day, Emily said something that flipped how I look at life-long commitment and suddenly made it much easier to imagine it: “Neither of us is going to stay in something that isn’t working and one of us could walk away any time. All that matters is that you want to be here today. We’ll deal with tomorrow when it comes.”

Damn. How piercing and how true. Could we really know this early? The answer, we decided together, was that we couldn’t. And more importantly, we didn’t need to. It was at this moment that I realized the most important thing about our relationship:

It’s always Day 1.

Adopting a Day 1 mentality about our relationship changed the questions we asked ourselves. Instead of asking “Do I want to spend the rest of my life with this person?” The question became, “Do I want to spend more time with her today than I did yesterday?” The answer has been “Yes” for over eleven years and that’s how we’ve made it work. Day by day.

It’s a work in progress, but this approach has made me a better husband, a better friend, and a better business partner. Here’s what I’ve learned about treating my relationships like it’s Day 1.

Obsess over today

Alleviating the pressure of forever makes it easier to visualize and build a healthy relationship. Whether you’re building a family or a business together, the path to future success starts today.

Take the first step

A Day 1 mindset recognizes that partnership is not about speeding toward a long-term commitment right away. We can move things forward day by day. Share a meal. Collaborate on a problem. Make a sales call. Instead of worrying about the future prospects of a new relationship, we can take the first steps, move forward together, and decide to stick with it (or not) as we go.

The business world has learned this and we see it throughout the tech ecosystem. Just look at vesting. It adds legal structure to a business relationship so that employees, co-founders, and investing partners literally earn their economics in steps. Vesting is there so that when the time comes to make the commitment and sign on the dotted line, you can still encourage Day 1 behavior throughout the relationship.

Sweat the little things

A relationship is the summation of all the big and small steps taken together, but closeness and trust are earned in the little moments. A text message saying “you got this” on the day of a big meeting. A quick email sharing a compliment from a customer. A phone call to check in when there’s nothing to ask for in return. These moments add up and they show how much you care.

Showing up for the big things matters, but doing that is the bare minimum. And when the big moments involve hard decisions or opposing perspectives, they test the strength of the relationship. They expose why trust is needed. Showing up in little ways is how trust is built.

Earn the right to be there every day

The best way to erode a relationship is to behave like you’ll have it forever. A shared intention (or even commitment) does not endow couples or co-founders with a lifetime of happiness and success. These intentions come with the shared responsibility to earn the right to be in our relationships every day.

I think about this a lot as an investor. I fight like hell to earn the right to partner with great companies, but winning a seat at the table is just the beginning. It’s not enough to passively support the company and show up to quarterly meetings. To be among the best, I need to find ways to proactively add value after the check is written, between meetings, and at any other time. In this role, it’s truly always Day 1.

Obsessing about today is about showing up and making an effort. To fully adopt a Day 1 mentality, it’s also important to consider how you show up and what you do with that effort.

Stay curious

A Day 1 approach cultivates curiosity from the deepest to the newest relationships. When we first meet people, it’s natural to realize we don’t know anything about them and that they have a whole life for us to learn about. Curiosity is the default.

But as time goes on, we settle into grooves in our relationships, especially the ones we’ve had for a while. There’s a comfort that comes from familiarity, and it’s a double-edged sword. Stagnation sets in if we’re too relaxed.

You may notice this with your parents or siblings. When was the last time you asked a truly curious question of a family member? They are growing too, but it’s easy to reduce them to just our parents, brothers, or sisters and miss opportunities to ask them questions that deepen our relationships with them.

Don’t assume

When I first started working with a coach, I marveled at how he could unleash a flood of ideas with a perfectly placed question. Even after months of working together, and knowing me through deep conversations, he would approach every new conversation with a beginner’s mind. He asked questions like he didn’t know me at all and assumed nothing as we unpacked the topic at hand. Then he sat back and listened as all my thoughts flowed out.

He was essentially acting as if every session was Day 1. After training with coaches, I’ve learned that setting aside assumptions and defaulting to inquiry is one of their main tools to maintain curiosity and hold space for their clients.

Today, I dedicate time like this every week to do the same for my own coaching clients. I regularly practice assuming less and asking more. It takes a small amount of my time, but this routine has been a powerful multiplier on my effectiveness in business and in life. It helps me focus on being more interested than interesting, and my relationships have improved because of it.

Be intentional

Creating time for coaching has become an intentional way for me to stay curious. In her interview with Shane Parrish, executive Kat Cole explains a different approach.

Describing her priority to be a great partner to her husband, she highlights the value of a monthly check-in to improve their relationship. Born of “a desire to go deep and a challenge to the other person if they’re being on the surface,” these meetings have become a forcing function for introducing deep curiosity into their partnership.

Their monthly check-ins involve questions that were inspired by the one-on-ones she had in her business:

“What’s been the best part about the last 30 days?”
“What’s been the worst?”
“What has worried you the most about our relationship?”
“What are you most proud of?”

The questions say it all. They are curious. They are meaningful. According to Kat, these conversations “[have] been an incredible enabler to [her] relationship” and they’ve even improved her business relationships as well. “My one-on-ones with my team got better as my check-ins with my husband became more refined and consistent,” she says.

A Day 1 mentality is about taking action. It’s about showing up every day and being curious and intentional. Because just like having purpose or passion, being soulmates or brothers from another mother isn’t worth anything without effort. It’s the choice to do the work and the dedication to the process that makes things real.

A Day 1 mentality also recognizes that a relationship is always a work in progress. That we are always a work in progress. Complacency is human and comfort in relationships can be beautiful. But if we strive to treat all of our relationships like it’s Day 1, we may stack enough days to look back proudly on the long journeys we’ve taken together.

I was working in ecommerce at Warby Parker, and my job was to grow the Home Try-On business in two ways:

1. Drive Home Try-On orders and

2. Increase conversion from Home Try-On to sales

We knew that some of the best ways to increase conversion involved simplifying checkout, and text-to-buy was our newest idea. I learned in user interviews that it was natural for shoppers to use their phones to take photos and send them for feedback. But when they decided on which frames they wanted, almost everyone’s instincts were to place orders on their computers.

“It will be easier to find the pair I’m looking for on my computer than on my phone.”

What if you didn’t have to find the frames again and you could just text us what you want? I wanted to make ordering with your phone as easy as sending a selfie.

I went to work to prove we could do it. I explored the technical requirements for implementing a high-deliverability solution that could reach all customers. I spoke to Twilio and several nascent companies that had built tools on their platform. I scoped how the orders would be placed with the engineering team, evaluated risks with finance and legal, and figured out how to trigger email flows with the data science team. I probed the CX team to understand how much engagement an individual could handle and the brand team about ways to communicate this new service.

In short, I figured out how to offer this innovative solution to our customers, and I couldn’t wait to show my team.

Getting Schooled

The meeting started well. Everyone was onboard with the idea. But as we started talking about next steps, our Co-CEO Dave stepped in with an appeal,

“This sounds good, but it’s going to take a lot of time and resources. Can you launch this with customers for free by Friday?”

Wow.

Here we are, a five-year-old company that has raised over $200 million. We are earning tens of millions of dollars of ecommerce revenue, serving hundreds of thousands of customers, and Fast Company has just named us the most innovative company in the world. Despite all of this and the care we put into building a lasting brand, our CEO was asking if I could launch a janky version by the end of the week.

It was absolutely the right question.

Instead of spending weeks handwringing over Jira tickets, drawing months of resources, and rolling something out to the whole customer base, I started by texting one customer the next day using a free Google Voice number.

Over the next few days, I texted hundreds of customers and developed a better understanding of their behaviors. A teammate from CX took over and soon we were texting hundreds every day. Over time we added people, integrated workflows, and pursued most of what I originally scoped. And by hacking it together, we iterated our way to a full offering, learning about our customers along the way. 

This taught me what it means to have a culture of rapid testing and experimentation. Forget about engineering and design resources, I couldn’t even get this idea considered for the roadmap without learning more about how it might perform first. Adding it to the roadmap was a non-starter.

Scrappiness is a Mindset

In the end, text-to-buy didn’t have the impact we thought it would. Customers texted and engagement was high, but it didn’t translate to purchase intent. “Conversational commerce” never took off. Maybe it was because mobile checkout on the site got better or because the company launched a snappy mobile app. But that’s not the point.

Five-plus years after selling the first pair of glasses, we were still grinding out quick and easy tests. Remember, Warby Parker was a well-funded, hyper-growth startup in 2015. We were maniacal about delivering an exceptional customer experience and we had a lot to lose if we screwed things up. We had the capital to add headcount and take big swings. But that didn’t stop us from acting small and scrappy. We made little bets over and over and then piled resources behind the best-performing ideas.

In the new normal of 2023, where capital is difficult to raise and growth expectations for most companies are dampened, you may want to throw your hands in the air and say R.I.P. Good Times. To lament what you could’ve done with more resources.

I’m here to say that maybe these capital constraints will create good times. Airbnb, Stripe, Datadog, Slack and Warby Parker were started in the last recession. These companies were born in capital-constrained environments, and scrappiness persists in their cultures. Airbnb’s co-founders famously sold political cereal boxes in 2008 to fund their business when no one else would. What myriad ways does that entrepreneurial spirit spread through their people?

As startups look ahead into 2023 and beyond, capital efficiency, creativity, and scrappiness are more important than ever. But you shouldn’t just embrace them now in this market. They are distinct advantages in any market. The scrappy creativity that’s forced on you today might be just the thing that sets your business apart tomorrow.  

We’ve all been there. The last week of the year, the end of a grueling project, or the rare respite when the boss takes a vacation. Teleported from the land of urgent work, we find ourselves with precious time and for some reason, we squander it.

What’s going on here?

Contrary to popular opinion, I don’t think we are unproductively pushing off important work. Instead, ambitious people are subconsciously deprioritizing ideas and choosing to spend time on better things.

For people who get things done, procrastination is often intuitive prioritization. 

Has this ever happened to you? You stared at a task on your to-do list for weeks until you eventually crossed it off and said, “Forget it. I’m not going to do it.” You left emails in your inbox to respond to another time and realized days later that you didn’t need to. Archived.

We can see this procrastination as inaction, or we can see it as a tool for reevaluating our work as we’re doing it.

When we spark new ideas, we assess their value in isolation. The ones worth doing go on our lists and we create the intention to complete them.

What we don’t do in those moments is evaluate our ideas against all the other things we could do. Procrastination describes when our intention of manifesting our clever ideas doesn’t align with our intention of completing them right now. As the days go by and those intentions fail to line up, we lament our poor use of time.

What if we trusted that deep down, we’re doing what makes sense to do?

When I asked Jake how he was using his time instead, he said he went for long runs and made plans with friends—two things he loves doing. When I suggested that he might not be procrastinating, and instead prioritizing what his mind and body needed, something shifted. The guilt washed away and owning his intentions made him remember his choices with a smile.

Procrastination is like prioritization’s charmed, scatterbrained cousin. Whereas prioritization is calculated and disciplined on the way to achieving its goals, its cousin procrastination annoyingly accomplishes the same things by accident, effortlessly progressing through life while looking directionless to the outside. The destination is the same, but getting there feels different. 

Prioritization is procrastination with intent. 

Not all procrastination is intuitive and healthy. Scroll Twitter endlessly and you’ll waste your time between meetings. Pack right before your flight and you’ll leave your toiletries at home. Stall leaving a lousy job and you’ll delay starting the rest of your life. Yes, when I say this will happen to you, I mean it has happened to me.

There are consequences when you let yourself off the hook and avoid the hard things. Intuiting your way through life makes it challenging to accomplish long-term goals, and to do the hard and important things.

In his Ted Talk and article Why Procrastinators Procrastinate, Tim Urban blames this on the Instant Gratification Monkey inside our brains. According to him, a monkey who wants to do what is easy and fun takes control of the wheel from the Rational Decision Maker who wants to do what makes sense. Chronic procrastinators are those who struggle most with keeping the monkey under control.

Sadly, he says, “Long-term procrastination has made [people] feel like a spectator in their own lives.”

I have a more generous take. Procrastination isn’t watching your life go by. Sometimes, it’s a healthy and intuitive form of prioritization. 

I’m not saying let the Instant Gratification Monkey drive. I’m saying sometimes, the Rational Decision Maker is guiding you better than you even realize. Rather than beat yourself up, trust that you know what’s best for you.

And go ahead, procrastinate.